I recently took a jazz class after what I’m embarrassed to say has been a couple of years.
I felt foolish but I also felt good. I made myself vulnerable, but felt confident that I had opened up to learn new things and continue to grow and practice.
At the end of the class, the teacher had every dancer come out onto the floor and just take a moment to close their eyes and breathe. Then she had us repeat a couple mantras out loud. Some of them were…
I am enough.
I am strong.
I am beautiful.
I am more than enough.
It almost feels embarrassing to say this, but I had a really hard time saying those things out loud. I can barely say them in my head. I got choked up and I whispered them because that’s all I could do. I made myself say them because I realized in that moment how important those words were for me to say to myself.
I realized the importance of being able to say those words of love and confidence to myself. Having other people compliment you is one thing. Complimenting yourself is far different. It’s easy to be self deprecating and get by on false confidence. Actually seeing strength and beauty in yourself, and believing it is so much harder. But it is so important.
The second part of my epiphany came as I was scrolling through Instagram. I realized how much I seek validation from other people instead of finding it in myself. Sure, in the end I post content that I want to post, but I am still scrutinizing it and comparing it to the other content I see in my news feed. I still incessantly check to see how many likes I get, if someone has commented, or follows me. And it’s so clear to me how unhealthy this must actually be. It feels like I can only be confident in myself when other people have done it for me.
I see so many people posting selfies and vulnerable content that is meant to shed light on something. But sometimes I wonder why we do it in 140 characters or less, or in a picture that our “friends” can either like or dislike. Don’t get me wrong, I do it all the time. I’m even doing it now, but it doesn’t always feel honest, healthy, or fun.
I feel pressure to post inspiring, respectable, and thought-out content on my professional Instagram page and my blog. But to me that is healthy because I am branding the part of myself that is in the professional world. And the professional world has always relied on branding and marketing. What worries me is that I, and so many other young users, have started branding and marketing our very existence. You have two choices, to follow trends perfectly or set them. You have to accumulate and maintain followers, and likes and themes. Which is all so much work, and leaves so little room to be a complex human being that makes mistakes and represent the diversity in yourself.
While I don’t see myself stepping away or deleting my social media any time soon, my own personal goal is to arrange and post content in a way that makes me happy based on my own standards and nothing else. And beyond that, my most daunting personal goal is to take real steps to find self validation and learn to actually love and feel confident in myself, no matter how cliché that might sound.
