"Forgive me if I stut-stutter, from all this clutter in my head" - Teddy Geiger (Confidence)

A song came on at work and brought me back to my teenage self. You know when that feeling just hits. It becomes almost joyous (now) because you have forgotten how insurmountable your problems seemed back then. Yet you survived. The pain of a break-up, or a traumatic event, still lingers enough in the background of the bass line, to remind you though that they never truly left.

Confidence. Somewhere along the way, I lost it and have been searching for it ever since.

I've been on this journey of self-reflection for a little while now. I embrace the past, the nostalgia, the pain. It set me on my course that has led me here. It's easier to live in the familiarity and safety of comfort, but hard to get out. It's a slippery slope. 

It is not a path set in stone, but I started to feel mine was. When did I become an appeaser, a second-hand player, in my own life. How do these things happen to us?

I trace some of my own insecurities and lack of self-esteem to a need to feel "normal" and "average". Not wanting to be different or stick out in a crowd. I knew I was different, and different meant bad somehow. I wish I could embrace the old me, and tell him how unique, and wonderful I am, and was. But that's not how life works. So I sank.

I heard if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, he will jump out. If you put a frog in water, and slowly heat it, he will boil to death. Forgive me, for that morbid ref-reference, but it seems to be how we get to these places in our lives that we come to regret. 

When did I stop all the things I used to do for myself. I think about how I *used* to be a runner. It was therapeutic. No matter what happened that day, or in the course of my life, I felt I left my problems miles back. This blog has had a similar effect. The problems never left, but my mind felt lighter and clearer. It's still the same road, but how I go forward changed.

I am learning to shut out that inner doubt, and become prouder of the person I want to/could be  It starts with letting go of the past. As I have said in previous blog posts, I am re-learning how to love myself.

We may be the product of our surroundings, but we are also the decisions we make. My mom has a mantra "What we aren't changing, we are choosing" (reverse it, or something close to that 😝). Easier said than done.

I realized our worth is decided by ourselves. Nothing is permanent, so jump out of the pot. Today I made the choice to be more confident.  

Drive-by and throw water in the face of that inner doubter that holds you back.