Can self-confidence and second guessing go hand in hand?
The other week, I was getting lunch with my friend and talking about the new Taylor Swift album. For anyone who lives in a hole (but still has the wifi access to read my blog), Taylor put out two surprise albums recently, which are more indie than her usual ones, and also…all fictional.
(Or so she says)
Emily and I were talking about how we love the albums, but we miss the authentic story-telling.
“I love Evermore, but this whole idea that the songs are fictional and not about her real life…I miss when she wrote about her actual life. I don’t want a song to be about Dorothea who lives in the prairie - I want it to be about her”
And after that lunch, I walked home, and wrote a satirical blog post about Lumiere the candlestick because a couple months ago I essentially I Evermore-d the blog.
I fall into the trap of thinking “how do other people perceive me?” way too often, and it’s a mindset that I’m convinced no truly great person has ever had. Joan of Arc probably didn’t wonder about how people perceived her. Alexander the Great never stressed out about posting a photo on Instagram.
And the worst part about this self-perceiving is that it only happens to me every other week, or every other month.
Some weeks I’m wickedly confident, and other weeks I’m my worst enemy, and I don’t know if this is something I can pin on pandemic living, or birth control, or if (and this is the worst option) it’s just something about myself I have to work on. Ugh.
But it’s confusing to oscillate between confidence and self-doubt seemingly without reason. Some days I can’t stop staring at myself in the mirror and other days I want to want to break the mirror into shards. It’s nonsensical.
Like, I’m fine with having a viral blog post online that shows how busted I looked after my nose job…but I really struggle with posting a photo on Instagram where I’m trying to look good.
And the same goes for written content, too. I’ve written a blog post about my most embarrassing moments, but I’ll go back and archive completely mundane blog posts because I re-read them from a different perspective and suddenly find them embarrassing.
And this is why I’m convinced that no truly great person has ever had these thoughts. I’m sure that Lewis and Clark never second-guessed their reputation. I’m nearly positive that Abraham Lincoln didn’t sneak peeks at people during the Gettysburg address to try and gauge if they liked it.
I mean damnit - I hate Trump, but I have to be honest, there’s a part of me that’s envious of his inability to ever second guess himself. I mean, he almost put us at risk for a nuclear war through a single tweet in 2018 and he didn’t regret it at all. Meanwhile I’m removing bold outfits from my Pinterest board because I think I won’t be able to pull them off in public!
But once again, the second guessing is nonsensical. Because I can perform improv on a stage in front of hundreds of strangers without hesitation…but I’ll find myself thinking later that night about how I could have made a scene better. It’s like…the person in a friend group who is the most bold and willing to pick “dare” in every game of “truth or dare”…is it possible for them to also be the person in a friend group most likely to ruminate over thoughts for hours before falling asleep?
Basically…can self-confidence and second guessing go hand in hand?
There’s a quote I love from Game of Thrones similar to this
So maybe that’s what the answer is.
Maybe we’re allowed to second-guess ourselves, but as long as we still do the thing that we’re unsure about, we can cement ourselves as confident people. Honestly though, I’m spitballing here. I don’t really know what the answer is, I just know the thought has been circling my mind for weeks now and I had to get it out somewhere.
Also, there is a chance that this is social-media driven. Or happens more to millennials and those in Gen Z. Or women who are taking birth control. Sometimes I think men just don’t have the second-guess gene that women do.
I was explaining how I feel about this to my boyfriend the other day, and I kept explaining it with sentences like “you ever have those days where you can’t do anything right?” or “you know when you look into the mirror and just don’t like anything about yourself at all” and try as he did to say the right thing (he always does) he couldn’t relate to what I was saying.
I’ve never been more envious of a brain before. I just wanted to rent his mind for a week like I do with Rent The Runway clothing and see what it would be like to operate with such a well-balanced mindset. I think I would be better off for it. Although the blog posts might be less entertaining.
Anyway, I think I’ve exhausted this topic but I just wanted to come on here and…write about something that’s actually in my mind. I love writing satirically and will keep doing it, but if we’re being honest…I only started doing it because it was a cop-out to writing honestly.
Also is it just me or does anyone else hate posting on Instagram lately?! I feel like ever since it was acquired by Facebook it’s been going downhill. Okay, now I’m really off topic haha.
But anyway, let me know if you’ve ever experienced thoughts like this before. I feel like it must be social media related (or maybe it’s just a type of anxiety) but it’s hard to pinpoint when the thoughts oscillate. Some days I don’t give a damn about anyone’s opinion, and other days I live my life according to it.
Until the next one,
S