Tag Archives: others’ opinions

March 11, 2017

532. Expressing Self-Trust and Confidence

By Marlen

 

§  Continuing from: 531. Redefining Self-Confidence

 

Here I’ll apply self-forgiveness on all the points I wrote out in the previous blogs, in order to tackle my self-created limitations and for once and for all rather see the benefit of owning my creation as my expression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to experience hesitation, self-doubt and lack of confidence whenever I am having to make decisions on my own and have no one to reference my decisions with, wherein I have gotten used to always being able to have the approval or disapproval of others to then decide to make a particular decision in my life alone – instead of realizing that regardless of what others might say, I am the one that will ultimately live with the outcome of such decision and as such, it is ultimately a point where I have to learn to trust myself, which in this case means learning from making my own decisions, moves and choices and accordingly walk through them, not fearing making mistakes or going ‘the wrong’ way because that’s how I’ve found that I get to then define and fine tune my decisions, my next steps and next choices.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not investigate what is really behind the hesitation, self doubt or uncertainty before which is in fact a fear of making mistakes, a fear of not really achieving my utmost potential – however I forget that such outcome as ‘best potential’ can only exist through practice, through making many choices, possibly many mistakes and walking many paths to then get to find ‘my expression’ wherein, in fear, I actually don’t get to truly develop myself because of existing mostly in ‘fear’ and as such in a constant limitation that leads me to be in a stifling position, ‘giving up’ in doing something out of giving too much weight on an outcome or the opinions on them, instead of realizing that I am the only one that is able to give weight – or a negative value – to mistakes, to attempts, to apparent ‘failed choices’ – and instead learn from it, stand up and do it all over again.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to rely on others’ opinions and perspectives on my expression in order to keep going or completely use them as a deterrent to stop my expression in certain ways, instead of realizing that a point of expression is to represent who I am in that particular moment with what I want to create, what I want to communicate to others ultimately and as such, there is no ‘right or wrong’ or ‘good or bad’ in it, but only a process of referencing myself, seeing how satisfied or not I am with it, taking myself into consideration and not looking for others’ opinions to decide to continue or not.

I realize that I have been my own worst critic as well so, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be my own worst critic wherein I have defined what I do as not ‘good enough’ when I compare it to what others do/express and so, have allowed myself to use this judgment as a reason to completely give up on something and get into an experience of ‘what’s the use’ – when a point of expression is precisely about practicing, doing it as much as one can until one can create or build a point of self-trust and confidence in it, which I can attest is definitely a process in other aspects of my life, but interestingly enough when it comes to creative expression, it’s like hitting a wall and this is mostly based on others’ feedback that I’ve taken ‘to the heart’, instead of staying true to myself, referencing it with myself first and foremost.

 I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to exist in self-doubt when it comes to assessing ‘what to do next’ or ‘what could I change or improve’ wherein the actual fear behind it is ‘fucking it up’ – wrecking it, messing it and so apparently ‘lose out’ an opportunity to have created something that I could be ‘proud of’ – but in reality there is nothing that we can create in ‘one go’ and have it come out ‘perfectly’ at once, and I realize that this ‘perfectionism’ or the idea that I have about what I can be satisfied with can be a huge show-stopper to me if I dare to start over-analyzing everything and then concluding that it is not what I expected, or it wasn’t as I intended – instead of realizing that this is a process of self-creation and self-expression, it takes practice, will take time, will take several tries maybe, but the point is to persevere and not give up ‘trying’ or getting frustrated for not getting a desired outcome.

I realize the practicality of practice and perseverance in this, wherein over time and continuous practice I am aware we can get to be more confident in doing anything – and the same therefore can be created in any point of artistic expression.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to give judgments, opinions, positive and negative values to words in relation to any point of artistic expression to the point of using them to validate or disqualify what I do as ‘good enough,’ where deep down I know I can trust myself in what I see, but have ultimately usually veered to get others’ reference and perspectives, which over the years I’ve used as a reason to not keep going, but, this is entirely my own decision, my own process in reality that I cannot blame on anyone’s opinion, because it’s only me that has given it sufficient value/worth to make an opinion more important than what I decide to express.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define confidence based on ‘doing something that is unique’ and so ‘special’ and so, whenever I started finding ‘similar work’ to mine, I sank into a pointlessness because of thinking that ‘everyone else is also doing it, so what’s the point?  When in fact, this is when comparison kicks in and so I stop seeing ‘the point’ when in fact, the point is myself, it’s about my expression regardless of what others do or not do or how similar it is.

Ultimately if I would measure anything I do based on how others do it, I’d be in a constant state of ‘giving up’ because ‘everyone else would be doing a lot of the same things I do anyways’ lol – when in fact this is about my expression, my development, my process, even regardless of the ‘final outcome’ but more so focusing on what I go learning about myself in the process as well.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to for example diminish my photographs as something that ‘anyone else could have taken’ or something that ‘everyone nowadays can do with cellphones’ which I used as an excuse to give up on taking photographs based on ‘others already doing it,’ instead of rather realizing each one of those photographs were moments where I was truly focused in my reality and making a decision to capture something, it actually assisted me a lot to pay close attention to my surroundings in a constant manner, which I still enjoy doing yet don’t take photographs any longer because of thinking ‘what’s the point, there’s thousands of pictures with the same thing, nothing new’ where I then doubt myself even with the potential of taking a photograph because ‘others probably already took one similar’ – which again, if I expanded this kind of assessment to anything else, I would be constantly stopping myself from doing anything based on what ‘others have done already.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to doubt myself, become hesitant and ultimately feel ‘incompetent’ in relation to points of self-expression in arts because of going into comparison, believing that there’s nothing ‘special’ in my stuff so why should I bother? But I realize and have seen from others’ examples how people that stick to developing themselves and persist on practicing, eventually get to be quite confident in their creations – and that’s the potential that exists when we don’t stop to compare ourselves to others, but stay true to oneself, to the purpose of the point of creation which is ultimately of self-creation, where the result is only that, an outflow or a consequence of a deeper process that takes place while creating something.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be focused on ‘a result’ within my expression, instead of considering the ‘who I am’ throughout the whole process, which ultimately is what is part of my self-creation that I’d like to develop and focus on, every moment’s decision and trusting myself within them, considering it all as a process to learn about myself, to learn about giving ‘shape’ to something and also to take responsibility for my creation where I am the one that is entirely behind it, and not any one else’s opinion or perspective on it – this way, whatever anyone else can say about it is an extra opinion, and not a defining factor that determines anything for me – but can only take it as a point of feedback for sure.

 

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to discourage myself from continuing any point of self-expression based on my own opinions, judgments and expectations standing as self-criticism, that led me to then rather ‘not bother’ at all with it, in spite of how I see that when walking through my own veils of perception, I can actually enjoy doing it and I enjoy seeing ‘me’ in every step of the way and reflect it all back to what I am, where I am and who I am behind that one point of self-creation.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have defined confidence in the past based on reassuring or supportive comments made by others whose opinion I deem as important and in some cases having certain authority or superiority over myself, to then decide to continue or not doing something, wherein I then placed my expression, my perseverance in the hands of an opinion, a judgment and a perception – instead of having allowed myself to trust me in continuing to work on it, and stop my own backchat in relation to it, while focusing on the physical process of creation.

I forgive myself that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to covertly blame someone else as the reason why I decided to not play music anymore, wherein I am the one that took another’s words and attitude personally and made it a reason, excuse and justification why I didn’t have to bother anymore with practicing playing music, and instead only focus on doing visual arts – eventually extending my own judgments to anything related to visual arts wherein I then stopped doing any of it at all because of believing how pointless it all is – therefore, there is no one to ‘blame’ for this. This is essentially something I did to myself and so I can only now stand up from it.

 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take an opinion, a judgment, a perception as ‘truth’ – when in fact the truth is who I am in every moment of creating something, the decision I make and their outcome – which means when I decide to stand all the way in every step of the way, that’s where I see I build self-trust and confidence in relation to ‘the outcomes’ because then I am certain that this is something I created for myself, by myself, without any pretense other than expressing who I am, which is where I want to develop my strength as well, instead of taking ‘what I believe others will say’ into consideration, which is not really about ‘others’ then, but about myself not limiting me by all of that. .

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to perceive that ‘I didn’t enjoy making art any longer’ when in fact, it was the series of judgments, perceptions, opinions that I allowed to take precedence over the creation process of me-expressing-myself, and so that’s where it became tiresome, unbearable, causing more ‘stress’ than enjoyment – and it all was because of how much I gave value and worth to judgments.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ‘fear’ not having any other point of reference for my creation, wherein, I believe that I cannot ‘continue’ doing something unless I get any form of feedback from others – and in such situations or contexts it makes sense, but when it comes to artistic expression, it is truly the one point where I am the one with the ultimate and only say, because it is a point of expression that cannot be judged as ‘good or bad’ and this is also why I also started resisting to do anything related to arts, because of how ‘ambiguous’ it would be through my judgmental eyes in terms of being unable to define it as good or not based on ‘others’ perspectives’ but ultimately, this is where I have to be the one that stands through in it all regardless, doing it as my expression, which cannot be ‘contained’ in a few judgments of value.

I commit myself to continue practicing building, consolidating and densifying my ‘confidence’ through artistic expression – and any other point of expression for that matter – where I can learn to trust my decisions, walk a point of self-creation all the way and ultimately ‘own’ my creation regardless of the outcome, learning from it  and trusting myself in my ability to learn and stand up from mistakes, not being afraid to making mistakes but rather reminding myself that’s the way to continue moving forward in any point of creation, to persevere, to be consistent and to not allow judgments, opinions or perceptions about it in my mind to deter me from continuing.

This is then how one gets to be comfortable in doing something, through practice and then ultimately that practice & repetition creates a solidity of it at a physical level, where there is a point of control and flow as well, which means being present, being directive yet not rigid about the outcomes, flowing with it yet being aware of the path all the way – and this is then what I can integrate as a physical expression of self-confidence.

Thanks for reading.

 

Join us in our process of Self-Creation as LIFE

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