If you’re anything like me then I’m sure you’ve struggled in the area of confidence at some point or another in your life. For me, it happened a lot in high school and then a lot during the beginning years of my college career. I think what caused my lack of confidence was that I never felt like I was good enough or pretty enough in high school compared to the other girls around me. They were all getting boyfriends and I felt like I was struggling to get a guy to like me. Then when I got to college it carried on but in a different way. I think my lack of confidence my first few years in college came from still being around girls who just seemed to be prettier than I was, but also because I was in a new place trying to figure everything out.
It wasn’t until probably the end of my sophomore year after a really bad ending to an on and off again relationship that I realized that I was good enough as is. I didn’t need to compare myself to other girls, I didn’t need to live up to any type of standard. I was my own standard and that was enough. I was pretty, I was nice, I was funny, and I was a lot of things that I should have been more proud of all along. While it wasn’t an automatic light switch of no confidence to Beyoncé level confidence, it was still confidence that I lacked from the beginning. I did find that it made me uncomfortable at times to think highly of myself, but that was because I used to think being confident in myself meant I was conceited, which was far from true. It made me feel good to know my worth and to know that no one could take that away from me.
No, my confidence is not always at its highest, but it is higher than it used to be which is enough for me. I still have my days where I feel like I’m not pretty, or that my hair isn’t falling the way I need it to, but those days don’t control me anymore. They’re just simply bad days that happen to everyone but they don’t get to take control over how I feel about myself the other 364 days a year. So be confident, be proud of who you are and what you bring to the table. Life is short and no time should be wasted on wishing you were someone else.