2023 Tested Me On This Brutally And I Kept Failing

A battle between me and myself.

2023 has been a weird year for me. A lot has happened in my life, yet it feels like nothing new really happened.

But one thing is for sure. It’s been a slow phase and the slowness wasn’t all peace and quiet. It was testing.

My confidence has been hit, broken and tested like never before.

I quit my 9–5 in big Tech. I was confident and fearless about my future. I was excited for my self-employed journey and my newfound financial freedom.

The best part was that I carried a lot of detachment with me. I wasn’t attached to any outcomes. I was content.

But that was until the universe figured out the one attachment that I was still holding onto unbeknownst to me

That was my physical appearance.

Long story short, making some big decisions this year changed my external environment to a degree where adaptation took a while.

For one, I switched countries this year. That means, a drastic change in weather, food and lifestyle. And my physical body couldn’t handle this all too well. My hormones went whack.

One of the most challenging outcomes of this imbalance was a severe breakout of acne that on my worst days, left my face looking like polka dotted print. Dark marks and painful lesions rented my entire face.

This kept happening every month. There was no end in sight.

All of this severely affected my self esteem and in turn, my productivity. My so-called “self employed” dreams were already being hit because I was lacking consistency due to this disease.

I’m relatively healthy. So being hit with a lifestyle related disease freaked me out. I din’t handle it well.

Panic caused me to self-sabotage

The game of skin is a game of patience. It takes 2 months for your skin to shed and turn over. It takes a year for a dark spot to completely fade.

So in a long marathon, panic and rushing become your worst enemy.

Indeed, I became my worst enemy.

I bombarded my skin with a range of skincare products in a rush to heal. It backfired.

It damaged my skin and external “beauty”.

But the biggest casualty was my self-love.

Because me and myself weren’t a great team anymore. It felt like “I” was making things worse for myself with all the rushed experiments on my skin.

So how can one be confident in one self when they can’t even trust themselves anymore?

It even seeped into my writing and I couldn’t write anymore. With my confidence and self love gone, writer’s block became a permanent state.

Winning the battle

Confidence is a wonderful thing.

But this year, I learned the hard way that the real strength of your confidence lies in its source.

Anybody can appear confident. But only a few actually are.

Even a narcissist appears confident, because of all the human supplies around him/her who fuel his/her unhealthy ego.

But take away their human source, and they have nothing.

Anybody can be confident when life is going in their favour.

You hit the gym, ace your skincare game. You start glowing and look your best.

You hit your next big goal. You feel accomplished and unstoppable. Your confidence soars like an eagle. Great.

But how long does that eagle keep flying there?

Eventually it lands. Who are you then?

The supply of confidence from your source is finite afterall, or we would all still be confident about a prize we won in 8th grade wouldn’t we?

So how strong is your source? How unshakeable is it?

Real confidence is one that withstands the worst periods of your life.

The rat race conditions you into believing that your confidence is dependent on your position in the race.

That you need to keep moving, achieving and then spend your earnings to upgrade your status in everything — your looks, car, house or a title.

Basically, you are constantly creating sources and ensuring that they supply you your dosage of confidence.

There’s something inherently wrong with that. Because those external things are just that.

External.

That was what the Universe has been trying to test me on and teach me about — inner confidence.

Start With Eliminating Confidence Deprivers

If looking at myself in the mirror and all the damage on my skin was so destroying to my sense of self, then I could simply stop doing that.

So I did.

If social media’s comparison game and show-off culture is making you feel less about your own journey in life, then you can log out.

This is not to coddle yourself through escapism and avoidance.

It is to shift your focus away from fleeting material and superficial things.

You can get your confidence “boost” from external things, but not your confidence itself.

You may be a multi-faceted being with many skills and talents. But you forget, that you are a simple soul within.

Self love is about loving yourself even at your lowest.

I had to remember that through this long ordeal with acne, and through taking a step back from my appearance. I realized how dependent I became on my appearance as a source of confidence, when all my appearance should be is just a small cherry on top of an existing cake.

Now, I’m withdrawing from all my external sources.

And I’ve been like myself again.

It’s because I repaired my relationship with myself. And that, is the foundation of my self-confidence.

I write. I do my self-care. I eat clean. I know future-me is going to be grateful for all that I do today.

Bonds grow thicker when you stand by someone during their worst phases. The same applies to the relationship with yourself — be loyal to yourself.

You cannot fool yourself into confidence by hating parts of yourself, by holding yourself upto impossible standards or by shaming yourself.

I no longer choose to do that to myself. Instead, I choose to love myself with all my imperfections. After all, my little nephew did not shy away from kissing on my acne-destroyed cheek. And that’s something we can all learn from little children — genuine love and acceptance.

The fact that I love and care about myself enough to be gentle and accepting of myself in all phases of life, not just the best ones, is where I derive my self esteem and confidence from now.

Happy New Year 🌹