What is the Secret to Real Self-Confidence?

By Nanice Ellis

Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

Have you ever lacked the confidence to speak your truth, express your creativity or even set boundaries? This is true for most people, but the real core issue is that we are not confident to be ourselves.

It’s funny to think that we need confidence in order to be our authentic selves, but it is true, nonetheless.

We are all born with innate confidence to be ourselves because we don’t know anything else. Try keeping a two year old from being himself. But as years go by, most children become socialized “not to be themselves.” A world where we are judged either worthy or unworthy is not a world where children, or adults, feel safe to be themselves. As time passes, the pressure and persuasion not to be oneself grows even stronger; “don’t do this, don’t do that, be this, but don’t be that.”