Eps 83: if you are simply unsure how to go about this
— podca
| Host image: | StyleGAN neural net |
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| Content creation: | GPT-3.5, |
Host
Nicole Gonzalez
Podcast Content
Feeling like you do not know who you are can make it hard to make choices that are good for your life, whether it is setting goals or starting a new relationship. If you are feeling like you do not know who you are, it may help to take time to understand yourself a little more. Fortunately, there are things that you can do to become more aware of yourself and start forming a stronger sense of identity.
If you are struggling with issues related to identity, and feel like you do not truly know who you are, there are things that you can do to deal with it. Taking steps to lower your overall stress and anxiety levels may help you break a downward spiral of negative thoughts, find some internal peace, and cope better with uncertainty in your life. Adding more self-care into your routines can help you combat negative thoughts and boost your sense of self-worth.
Noticing people and situations that lower your self-esteem can help you identify things you should avoid. Accepting that fact can help you become more comfortable in your own skin. These defensive, critical internal voices have been with you all of your life, and it may be uncomfortable to challenge them.
Old feelings of being inadequate, or that we will never be recognized or appreciated, can drive our self-doubt sky high. This internal critic may lead us to feel hopeless towards our partners, or pull away when things begin to get serious. It can amplify feelings of jealousy or possessiveness, or make us feel rejected and unworthy.
Like most things in life, uncertainty is more frightening to contemplate than to experience. It can make you feel hopeless and low about the day ahead, overestimate the magnitude of problems you are facing, or even paralyze you from taking action to address a challenge. Fear and uncertainty can make you feel stressed, anxious, and helpless to control the direction of your life.
When uncertainty strikes, our minds get to work trying to predict how things are going to play out. Evolution may have hardwired our brains to be resistant to uncertainty, but we will never truly know what the future holds.
Accepting uncertainty instead of trying to combat it, remembering there are surprising outcomes that cannot be predicted now, and leaning into that helps make it infinitely more bearable. Once you have learned how to master the tolerability, perhaps you can make the leap and truly enjoy the vast, open possibilities of the unknown. Allowing yourself to live in uncertainty like this may help you to lower your stress, come to terms better with your circumstances, and find a sense of peace when dealing with challenges. Focus on the present moment and your breath, and allow yourself to just feel and observe the uncertainty you are experiencing.
Focusing completely on the present can help you to become more in tune with your thoughts, emotions, wants, and needs. Each time you bring your focus back to the present, you are strengthening a new mental habit that may help you to let go of insecurity. Focus on the problems you can solve, act on the aspects of a problem that you can control, or just get back to doing whatever you are doing.
It is also important to recognize that, however powerless and hopeless you may feel, there are steps you can take to better cope with the circumstances that are beyond your control, ease your worries, and approach the unknown with greater confidence. While building yourself up does not happen overnight, with the right strategies and mindset, you can take steps toward changing how you view yourself.
Over time, you will begin to develop a better sense of what type of things appeal to you, and you will learn to better assert yourself in various situations. One way to get there is to start thinking about things that you enjoy and are important to you. These situations may become opportunities for you to find out what is right for you.
Sometimes, it can be difficult to know whether you really like someone, or whether you are just feeling a bit lonely. If you are feeling none of those things, you may not really like this person. As you would expect, a guy who is not sure of how he feels about you is going to try and delay talking about it, because he does not want to be uncomfortable.
By now, you should have a pretty good idea what to do if that guy is not sure about his feelings for you. Whatever his reasons, at least you will know what is going through his mind, and if there is anything you can do about it. Whether it is been a week, month, or even years since you had a chance to know the man a little more and find out what direction the relationship may be heading, there is something rather uneasy about the air of uncertainty.
Not feeling like you are enough can be particularly dangerous when it comes to your romantic relationships, making you more susceptible to feelings of anxiety and jealousy. Feeling constantly insecure can affect all aspects of your life, from your physical health and emotional wellbeing, to the way you do your job. Hitting the books on the nature of self-doubt and ways to overcome insecurity not only offers great advice, it also helps you to feel a little less alone in the things you are going through. Work with a therapist Talking with a trained therapist can help you examine your fears and insecurities while understanding the sources.