"The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves." — Pema Chödrön
Self-conscious thinking has plagued humanity for aeons, but I feel it’s absolutely decimating our society in today’s world.
Our social resumes are a collection of photos and videos, and those amount to followers; social credits that determine if you should be invited or not.
In our world, dating apps are the new norm, another way to be judged based on your appearance in a collection of photos.
And above all else, everything is now recorded and photographed.
This revolution seems to have been the perfect storm for the self-conscious nature of humanity to explode and leave its mark like a bomb filled with talcum powder. Our wants and needs to fit socially have now been turned up to a hundred, unleashing an epidemic of self-conscious thoughts that is quickly wiping out life as we know it.
Girls are getting nose jobs, lip filler and Botox and genuinely believe it’s a normal and healthy self-serving practice.
Guys are injecting themselves with peptides and steroids, genuinely believing there’s nothing wrong with it.
And people of all walks of life are doubting themselves more than ever. Doubting their looks, doubting their thoughts and doubting their identity.
People are looking in mirrors and thinking they look disgusting.
People are hating who they are and what they have become.
This is seriously wrong.
If you are self-conscious about how you look and who you are, there is more to do than surface-level patch jobs.
There are meaningful steps you can take to love how you look and love who you are.
"We seldom realize that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. We think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society." — Alan Watts
The first thing to understand is that to be self-conscious, you must be comparing yourself to something.
For instance, I grew up thinking I had an ugly hook nose.
Then one day, an Asian friend of mine told me he thought it was masculine and that his was too flat.
And when I went home to Türkiye, I saw that my nose was just like everyone else’s; in fact, it was flatter. And that’s when I realised that being born in Australia and being surrounded by people of Western European descent, and watching American media, had convinced me that there was something wrong with me, when again, it was just perspective.
In Australia and England, people put on fake-tan to become attractive, and in South Korea they bleach their skin.
So next time you are self-conscious about your physical appearance, remember that you are comparing how you look to a physical normal that you’ve been shown and that you’ve adopted.
You don’t need to analyse yourself under a microscope. Nobody sees what you see.
They only see the whole package — which includes your aura and character.
"To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don't need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself." — Thich Nhat Hanh
Personally, I naturally have low self-confidence. And I know a lot of people who are the same way.
You might think that it’s your nose, or your eyes, or your ears or your hair that is repelling people from you.
And fortunately, you are wrong about that. I promise you.
The most magnetic trait you can have is authenticity and comfort in your own skin.
If you don’t believe me, imagine you swapped your most self-conscious and anxious friend’s personality for a courageous and confident one.
They’d be a new person. They’d have people wanting to be around them. They wouldn’t be begging for validation anymore.
It’s incredible how differently they’d appear in the world. They would be a completely different person with a completely different gravity.
It doesn’t matter what you look like. It doesn’t matter what decision you make.
All that matters is that you are comfortable with yourself, you’re happy, and you’re positive.
"As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves." — Pema Chödrön
The time you spend staring in the mirror, critiquing your appearance, could be time spent creating something, or building something that represents you.
All that time worrying about things that might go wrong for you could be time spent helping your loved ones who have real problems going on.
All that time asking someone else to make your decision for you is time that could be spent on you learning through experience. Time spent gaining confidence because you learn to make decisions and you learn to face the consequences.
The bottom line is, if you are self-conscious and anxious, that isn’t getting you anywhere. In fact, it’s those exact traits that are holding you back.
And when you get your insecurities surgically repaired, or someone tells you which choice you should make, nothing is solved because the root issue is not solved.
If the nose is surgically repaired, the lips will be next.
If the decision is made for you, you will need support on the next choice too.
And if the thing you were anxious about turns out not to be a problem, you’ll start worrying about something else.
And for what?
How is this helping you?
You must realise that it’s the self-consciousness and lack of self-esteem itself that is the thing you should be focusing on — the root, not the flowers.
So please, for the love of God, stop listening to your ridiculous self-conscious thoughts.
Stop wasting your time hating on yourself just because of some irrelevant beauty or life image.
Get real! Throw away the microscope and the doubt. Start believing in yourself. Start learning to appreciate what you have (because people would kill to be you).
Life is too good and absurd to waste your energy like that.
Be good to yourself.
Sincerely,
eren
A few people have asked if I’ll help with anxiety, self-consciousness and general life support one-on-one. I’m going to try it with a handful of people for free.
If you’re interested, fill out this form as an expression of interest, and I’ll contact you :)
A collection of all songs mentioned in this letter over the years.
My ‘must-watch’ list: Eren’s Quintessential Movie List
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