Even my dog senses my lack of confidence! Seriously! We have noticed differences in how Zoe reacts to each of us. Jason sternly instructs her to stop or whatever and the dog meekly obeys. I attempt to sternly instruct and she ignores me. No, he hasn’t beaten her to put the fear of God into her or anything, she just chooses to ignore me sometimes. I have learned that I have to literally get in her face, look her in the eye and make my voice as stern as possible to make her listen. Yes, I know, Zoe is trying to exert her dominance….and my lack of self confidence makes it easy for her to win. I don’t want an out of control dog, so I am having to force myself into a self confident being, at least when I am working with her.
Yes, I have known that while at one point that I have a self confidence issues. Oh, I used to be somewhat confident and willing to try new things, put myself out there, walk with my head held high and all that. But that confidence has wavered. Ok, saying that it has wavered is putting it mildly. It virtually became non existent. Life just beat any self confidence straight out of me. There was the great teaching debacle and the repetitive lackluster experiences in my career. Then of course there was my first marriage where my ex repeatedly showed me that I was worthless through his disregard for me. (Isn’t that a nice way of putting it?). I have had quite a few situations where people have worked to undermine any self confidence that I had managed to scrape together. I have had numerous people put me down and constantly tell me that what I do is never good, I’m not enough, etc. when possible I have actually purged those people from my life, sometimes it’s impossible. And of course being obese sucks the confidence out of a person.
I know that the lack of confidence will grow when I lose weight. It did before when I lost weight. But in the meantime, how does one grow a self confidence? It’s a vicious cycle, because I know that my lack of self confidence plays a part in my weight loss efforts. It plays a huge part. I’m constantly thinking, I can’t do it, it’s worthless to even try, I’m not worth the time, etc! And that is the crux of the matter in my perpetual weight loss struggles of late. Sure, temptations hit me (I’m talking to you cake) but if my self confidence and self worth were stronger it would make a huge difference in what choices I make.
I don’t have the answer….except to fake it until I make it.