How often does that little voice inside your head make up excuses or opt-out of situations or actions that you know you really want to pursue?
You know the feeling…
- Thoughts and images race through your head a million miles per hour
- Even though your heart instinctively says YES, every inch of your mind is screaming NO and you are instantly paralyzed into inaction
- Your breathing speeds up
- Your palms get sweaty
- Your face turns red
- You want to find a hole to jump into a hide…you can’t get away from the situation fast enough
- You escape (either physically running away or emotionally giving up by withdrawing, using alcohol or acting unnaturally – you even know this is happening, but it is your coping mechanism)
- You make sure you don’t take any chances and try to fade into the background
- You beat yourself up about it after knowing that you missed out on another great opportunity
In short, insecurity holds you back in your life.
Not only does it prevent you from growing, learning, and experiencing the best in life, it also eats away at you inside further eroding your self-worth and self-esteem, lowering your self-confidence and feeding your insecurities closing the loop in what becomes a vicious cycle impacting every area of your life from your health and wellness to your career and finances all the way through to your relationships and mental health.
Can we overcome insecurity?
5 Ways To Acknowledge and Overcome Your Worst Insecurities
1. Remove The Roots Of Insecurity
Just as a weed will grow back if you don’t pull them out by the roots, insecurities will return again and again if you don’t determine their cause. In most cases, the cause stems back to your own limiting beliefs.
For example, you may be very confident around your friends, but quite insecure around superiors.
Why is that?
It could be that you require a certain degree of attention, praise or reinforcement that superiors will generally not give you because they are typically too busy and expect you to be a self-starter.
That’s not how you see it though, to you their neglect and avoidance comes across as if they don’t like, appreciate or support you when that is in fact, not the case.
By examining your beliefs and thoughts around insecure situations, you can often replace existing thought patterns with new ones so that you relive yourself of the pressure and eliminate your insecurity
I used to get tremendously insecure speaking in front of large groups until I examined my own beliefs…instead of believing that everyone expected me to be ON FIRE every minute, I changed those beliefs to align more with reality…that the majority of people that go to see me speak are struggling with their own challenges, insecurities and desires and all they really expect is to walk away with 1 or 2 nuggets that they can use to help transform their lives. As long as I deliver those nuggets, nothing else really is expected and so all of the pressure my old thoughts forced on me led to great insecurity. Since then, I have been able to overcome those insecurities and become a much better speaker at the same time.
2. The 50-50 Rule
Remember that no matter who you are, about half the people you interact with will like you and half won’t…that’s true of someone like the Presidents of countries, business moguls, humanitarian leaders, teachers…across the board.
Yet so many of us put massive pressure on ourselves to be liked.
The entire thought process and desire to be liked is really pointless…commit to eliminating those thoughts starting now and instead focus on how you can bring your true personality, thoughts and vision to the world knowing that you will inevitably capture 50% and better yet, they will love you more than ever for being yourself.
3. You OWE It To Them And To You
When I was young I had a teacher share a very profound thought with me…
If you choose to limit your thoughts or actions based on insecurity it is SELFISH because you are depriving the world, including those closest to you, of the incredible gifts your true mind have to offer.
I had never thought of it in those terms before.
In fact, most of us focus so entirely on our own insecurities that we never get close to thinking about the impact our insecurities have on other people around us.
Just one thought, one exchange, one action, one relationship or one communication could lead to profound change in someone’s life yet when insecurity holds you back from thinking, sharing or doing you actually deprive the world of this greatness.
It was this realization (and the numerous others that came after) that led to the creation of Attracting Greatness – a step-by-step guide on how to nurture the greatness that exists within you now, remove the obstacles covering it up and allowing you the freedom to share your wonder with the world resulting in a fulfillment and progress that is undeniable.
4. Meditation – Regaining Perspective
Most people see the goal of meditation as reaching a state of relaxation or calmness, and to some extent this is one accomplishment that can be realized through the regular practice of meditation.
In my case though the benefit was far more profound.
For me, the ultimate benefit of practicing meditation came in the form of achieving a new, fresh and freeing perspective on life and my place within.
Meditation, practiced properly, allows you to enter a state of objectivity placing the judgement that goes along with many of our thoughts and emotions into suspension.
The ability to allow your thoughts and beliefs to pass through your mind MINUS the harsh judgements and associations we typically attach to them is amazingly freeing and allows us to see our insecurities for what they are…in many cases, overblown exaggerations and fabrications of what *could* or *may* happen without any consideration of the GOOD that will come about (the opposite side of our limiting thoughts)
Through meditation you gain a new-found perspective on your insecurity helping you to defeat the underlying limiting thoughts that led to those insecurities in the first place.
All of this happens quite naturally in the first couple of week of meditation and is not often something one may associate with the 15-20 minute daily practice.
5. Belief, Faith and Certainty
Insecurity comes from a significant lack of belief and certainty about your ability to handle certain situations, interactions or environments.
We can’t trivialize the impact, for many people this lack of belief in their ability to manage and then thrive in situations that create insecurity is life-changing, and often is never dealt with haunting people their entire lives.
It’s not that surprising to see how stubborn this lack of belief and certainty can be given that we spend an entire lifetime internalizing vivid thoughts, images, and scenarios around how BAD things can turn out for us. The full power of our brain conspires against us using its power to link together isolated thoughts into complex combinations of thoughts and scenarios to create completely fabricated stories (much like a mystery or horror movie) that become part of us…we repeat them so many times in our mind that we believe them to be true.
“I always completely fall apart in front of person X…they can tell immediately so I am going to avoid them for the sake of my future” becomes reinforced with vivid visions of what it was like to screw up in front of them enhanced with all kinds of fabricated thoughts about what they are thinking, how they see you and how much worse it will go next time!
To truly deal with insecurity we must consciously re-program these thoughts.
That means replacing the negative outcomes with positive ones.
Replacing the dastardly scenes in our heads with great ones that have positive outcomes
Swap out thoughts about how others may see or respond to you in favor of how powerful it will be to your life and those around you to finally act in accordance with your true personality and inner spirit.
Happily, this reprogramming can be done in days not taking a lifetime as the original negative thoughts and beliefs have been cultivated.
Insecurity is REAL and can be debilitating.
However, you can overcome your insecurities using these 5 techniques giving yourself and those around you the freedom to be who you really know you should be.
Are you ready to tackle your insecurities? Leave us a comment and let us know if you are ready.
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