Confidence, Confidence, Confidence!

Confidence is often portrayed like this elusive concept that only few of us achieve. I am of the opinion that confidence takes many forms before reaching its true and refined quality. What forms I hear you ask?

1. Faking it Confidence

This is brought on by adrenaline, a burst of courage and/or stupidity. This is the confidence that could help you finally cut your hair, walk out of the house for the first time with your natural hair or even decide to visit a salon.


This confidence is fleeting because although your exterior reads happy, internally you are a crumbling mess. You are petrified of criticism and one compliment could lift your mood just as easily as one jibe could send you running home to cry.

2. The Bite-Me Confidence


This is the time when you learn how to snap back. This confidence is borne from a mix of frustration, anger and perhaps disillusion. You finally confront a critic, usually a friend/family member. You finally decide to purge your feelings and state meaningfully that this is your hair.


This type of confidence could be good and could be bad. Sometimes it helps your psyche other times you launch into a tirade.

3. I'm Better than Her Confidence

This is perhaps the worst type of confidence. It comes from comparing yourself to others. This is the confidence that leads you to think that since your hair is not that great then you have to compensate. Compensate means you have to atleast be slimmer or thicker than the next girl or convinces you that you must leave the house in full make up when you never did before.

I say this is the worst type of confidence because it is based on being negative about your hair which stops you from reaching true confidence.

4. True Confidence

True confidence is an aura. You can walk into a room and quickly spot a truly confident person, there is an air of serenity around them. True confidence comes from practising a lot of faking it and bite-me confidence. It gets to the point when you begin to believe your own truth. You begin to love your curls and form your own little universe where your curls are adored. You learn to handle criticism better, challenging it when necessary other times letting it slide when it is spiteful or meaningless.You learn to laugh at yourself because you are not overly sensitive.


True confidence is when nobody is in the room, when no ears are listening, you can look at yourself and love what you see, even perhaps even to a level which may be considered indecent ;) Want to achieve true confidence?

I truly believe that it is important to be positive about yourself every day. This means taking the time to look at your reflection refusing to be your own worst critic and learning to use positive adjectives for you and your hair. Literally telling yourself you are beautiful and worthy until you convince yourself that you are.

Are you confident and if so what form does your confidence take? Are you striving to be confident and what are you doing towards it?

Comments

  1. I'm still striving to be truly confident....but for now I fit under the 'faking it' category.

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  2. Keep on faking it. From my experience, faking it usually turns into true confidence because you eventually become positive about yourself all the time. All the best!!

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  3. one way that i get myself to really love the way i look natural is to take a picture of myself on my best hair days. those images are usually the ones that stick to me because i look at them the most. i'm seriously bordering on the almost indecent side. ;) i love myself! i take those great hair days pictures almost every day so that should explain why it's almost indecent! haha!

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  4. Honestly I've had all of these at one point haha.

    I'm a bit at the bite me confidence...if there is a kiss my @ss one I would be part of that too haha. I did back track from true confidence for various reasons, *so a relapse is possible* but i'm working on me. :-) I will say I was actually getting a bit TOO cocky at "true" so it was a good thing I backtracked haha.

    Always a work in progress but hey that's life!

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  5. Hi Jc - Just wanted to drop by and say hello.

    Great post! I am still working toward true confidence; reminding myself everyday that I am beautifully created :-)

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  6. Hey Lydia! Thanks for dropping by and the compliment. All the best in your journey too.

    @Jaded - I agree that a relapse is possible but as long as you keep working at it, you'll be fine. I know personally that I'm too cocky lol but I have a cute smile to cover it up ;)

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  7. Interesting post. My confidence rating occasionally depends on my mood. If I feel good it shows. If not it also shows...

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  8. This is a very thought provoking post. I would have to say I have true confidence but it has developed over time. And evolved from "Fake it" and "Bite Me" confidence. Being natural has teach me to really exam self and fix those things that I can and embrace those thing that I can not. My confidence in my natural hair has transcended into my overall self-perception. I use to be so self conscious of everything but know my attitude is more "I love everything that is me".

    I would like to pose this question on facebook and get more feedback. www.facebook.com/naturalhairrules

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  9. @Natural Hair Rules - Sure thing, go ahead!

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  10. I think I go through each stage in one week, or maybe even one day haha. But usually I am either faking it (a bad hair day) or truly confident (a better hair day).

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  11. I love everything you said! We are all beautiful, and we need to help remind each other of that. Being less critical of ourselves as well as others. I'm not sure I will ever develop the level of confidence I want, but loving myself is something I can promise to do every morning when I look in the mirror :)

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  12. I think I go through all of those characteristics. Most of the time I have the fake it confidence but as I am growing in the natural process, I am moving towards true confidence which is what I hope to achieve. My husband always say that confidence is sexy.

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  13. Fabulous post!! I recently turned 30 and I have a new confidence I never felt before. Never one to show my insecurities, I was a faithful “faker” but recently I discovered my true confidence. Of course I still have “fake it” and “bite-me” moments but much less than before. I really believe the older you get the more true confidence you get. Or maybe it’s a “I don’t give a damn what you think” confidence”. Either way it feels great!

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  14. oh my god! I needed so much to read this article. I need to work BIG time on on my confidence...especially I am my worst critic....like I never cut myself any slack and always second guess myself
    right now i am in the fake me confidence,striving for bite me and true confidence.
    Great article!

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  15. this was posted over a year ago but it still rings true. I think I have the faking it confidence right now. One thing that I do to help it become true confidence is to wear my hair as it styled it... even if the braids are off center, even if the parts arent even, I hold my head high and wear it with pride :)

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