Am I Good Enough?

My struggles and success with self confidence

“The most beautiful thing you can wear is self confidence”

-Blake Lively

This is truly a difficult thing for me to write about. It’s been one of the biggest struggles of my entire life, a burden that I’ve carried for years, something that’s held me back from accomplishing things in my past. This isn’t what I typically like writing about, but we all have struggles. Those things that hold us back and weigh on us constantly. Those things that take years of focus to defeat and eradicate from our lives. While it may be seen as a taboo subject, I believe that our downfalls shouldn’t be something we hide from, but rather something we embrace. That doesn’t mean you have to be proud of them, but rather that we shouldn’t fear them. Because they are part of who we are, and our fight to overcome is part of our story.

In this moment of honesty and vulnerability, I’d like to talk about one of my biggest struggles, and more importantly, how I overcame it. Since I was young, I’ve struggled with the idea that I wasn’t good enough. Now admittedly that is a very broad statement and certainly isn’t very specific, but that’s because the way I thought of myself like that was very broad and open. I always found myself thinking that I didn’t have what it took to succeed, I always felt like I was disappointed the people closest to me, and most of all, I felt like I wouldn’t be good enough for anyone who I crossed paths with. There’s many things I experienced in my young ages that led me to this conclusion, but I’ve come to realize that a lot of it were things I had convinced myself of without reason. This led me to many places in my life where I felt like giving up, and in some cases, I actually did. There were many hobbies I had throughout my childhood that made me happy, some of which I dreamed of making a career out of. However, due to my lack of confidence and struggle with my own worth, I gave up on many of them. Even throughout school I felt the same way, I was always a straight A student and enjoyed almost all of my subjects, but I still had myself convinced that I would eventually fail. The negative impact this had on me is something I’ll never forget. The things I gave up on, the things I never tried and the things I didn’t give my best effort in will always bother me. However, I eventually found a way to get over this and rebuild my confidence in myself.

Over the last year I have been through a lot. I’ve had experiences both good and bad that re-shaped who I am and what I think about myself. I won't go into detail on those in this article simply because I would need an entire novel to explain everything. The important thing to know is that the last year has been one of the hardest of my life, but I will be forever grateful for the things I’ve experienced. The journey to a healthy mindset is a long road filled with many obstacles, some of which seem impossible to get past. I can truly say that if I didn’t have the people in my life that I do right now, I wouldn’t have made it this far. I have friends who are constantly supporting me and a family that looks after me. These people gave me a reason to better myself, and the tools I needed to do so along the way. However, while they helped me more than I could have ever hoped for, what really helped me the most was rewriting my personal narrative inside my head. One of the reasons we all struggle with things similar to this is the story we have written about ourselves within our own minds. The road to true happiness and peace doesn’t start with the people and things you have on the outside, it happens with the control of your thoughts and feelings on the inside. You have to learn to take your thoughts captive. Eliminate the bad ones and embrace the good. No matter how tempting it is to think negatively, force positive thoughts about yourself into your head and don’t let them escape. As difficult as this sounds, with enough practice and dedication, you can overcome your biggest roadblocks and work your way to a healthy mental state. Effectively changing your life for the better.

In the last year I went from being someone with almost no confidence, who expected to fail and who never believed in their capabilities. To a confident go getter with an “I can do this” attitude, with an excitement to see where life takes me. I’m proud of the progress I’ve made so far, and I continue to work on improving myself everyday, and I truly can’t wait to see where this new mindset takes me.

-Braden Schmidt 11-7-2019