Confidence

I find my lack of confidence alarming.  No matter how much evidence to the contrary, I have a deep-seated belief that everything I do and everything I am is pretty shitty.  I'm working very hard to shake this, but it is still there, whispering to me.  I can project as much as I want, and tell myself over and over that these beliefs are false, but they stick, somewhere under the surface, just waiting to jump on me when I least expect it.

You're not smart.  You're not pretty.  You're not funny.  No one really likes you.  You will be alone.  You will be unsuccessful. 
You are annoying.  You are unnattractive.  You are stupid.  You are fat.  You are a bad person.

I wasn't raised like this.  I was raised by someone who had a mother who constantly told them they weren't good enough, so she raised me the opposite.  We were told how smart we are, how great we are, how much we are loved.  But still, this lack of confidence.  I see it in my brother.  I see it in my friends, too.  Is it this country?  Does our society instill this in us from an early age?  Is it the consumerist belief that you need to buy more, more, more to be good enough?  Fuck, I don't know.

All I know is that this needs to stop.  We need to realize that we have faults.  We have weaknesses.  But, we have strengths.  We have greatness in us.  We are good enough, and we can become even better.  Nothing is stopping us.  I'm not saying that we can be whatever we want--that line of bullshit created a generation of us that are overeducated and cannot find real jobs.  I'm just saying we are smart enough, pretty enough, nice enough, and we won't be alone.  We are loveable.  We have friends and family who actually like us for who we are.  And if we don't, we can fucking find them.  Trash the ones that don't.  Ignore them.  Focus on the positive.

Success should never be measured by money or belongings.  It should be measured by happiness and love.  And if I go by that, I'm becoming more successful every day.  My confidence is getting higher and I'm able more and more to tell those silly negative voices in the back of my head to shut the hell up.