Be Confident, Not Confined – Article 5
Be Confident, Not Confined
Let me ask you a question, how many times in your life have you agreed to something…..an event, a purchase, a date with a creep because they wouldn’t bugger off!……whatever it may have been but you REALLY didn’t want to do it? How did it make you feel? Please feel free to leave your comments, I want to hear them because I will be doing a follow up piece to this post at a later date.
Self-sacrifice and people pleasing are real mental blocks and dream killer, it’s time to move past all of that!
I am going to share another evening with you from my high school days, this was the most frightened I have ever felt in my life! Like I mentioned before, I didn’t have any self-confidence or any form of a backbone, full on ball jellyfish I was when I was younger….peer pressure and following the masses was the story of my life. Making proper decisions for myself, NOPE! Every bad decision that was available, I made it. All a direct relation to me being a shell of a person. Which led me to spending time with more unsavoury types of people, let alone dating them. In grade 12 I started seeing a guy who for lack of better words, had a shady character to say the least. But he was the quintessential “bad boy” which was what I was all about! His “friends” were even worse and I am talking dangerous with no exaggeration. They liked to party and their parties were beyond WILD. I didn’t necessarily agree with my boyfriend’s lifestyle and his friends were aware of this. Like any typical Friday night, he got an invite to one of their famous ”backwoods” parties. He asked me to go and I told him this was likely not a good idea, his friends DID NOT accept me because I wasn’t “one of them”. He insisted I would be fine and that he could keep them in line. Well, because I wasn’t confident and was fully confined, I agreed to go…..sigh!
We drove for about 20 mins outside city limits and pulled into a clearing where we parked the car, got out and started walking towards the woods. We probably walked for about 10 mins until we got to where we were going. It was an open area with a cluster of tents and a small little run down looking cabin. There were a few fires burning in different spots with lots of yelling and laughing going on. Some guys being guys were scrapping and horsing around. I could hear glass breaking from bottles being thrown around……it was total fucking chaos! We walked up to a group of people and when they saw us coming I heard one of them say, “I told you not to bring “that ” (he was referring to me). My boyfriend said, “hey she’s with me and I am”, but that wasn’t good enough for them. I won’t give details on what type of group of people they were, but they were definitely the “take care of your own” and rid the rest kind of group. I was taken into the little run down cabin and tossed to the corner and told to stay there. I sat on the floor in that corner all curled up in a ball just hoping and praying we were going to leave soon. All of a sudden yelling started and it kept getting louder and louder. It was my boyfriend and these guys hollering back and forth at each other. Next thing I knew, I could hear fists flying! You ever hear the sound of someone getting punched and kicked…..it’s gut wrenching! I was petrified at this point because I knew my boyfriend was on the receiving end of the group beating. A couple minutes later the door to the cabin burst open and my boyfriend came flying through it head first. His face was all bloody and cut up, he was holding his ribs and could barely breathe. He stumbled trying to stand up and grab a hold of me and said let’s go!
We exited the cabin and it was surrounded with all of them, yelling and calling me horrible names like skank, cunt, bitch…..they were calling him, trader, scab, asshole and the list goes on. They were throwing bottles at us and kicking us, telling us to never come back as we walked past them. I got hit in the head with a bottle and was kicked a couple times. After what seemed like forever, we finally made it back to the car, got in and left. I never felt so much relief!
I tell you this story to remind you how important it is for you to stand your ground, be confident enough to make your own decisions and not be confined by the opinions and pressures of others. It’s an actual matter of safety sometimes! No, it isn’t always as serious as this when it comes to not making your own decisions but, you never really know do you. There’s a reason you’re always told to trust your gut and this is an example that I’ll carry with me always.
There are also very positive reasons to trust your instincts and for making your own decisions too. Like allowing the Universe to guide you to be at the right place at the right time for blessings to occur in your life. This could be anything from meeting someone who brings good into your life to buying the winning lotto ticket at the right location…..the list is endless, you just have to be open to it. If you aren’t confident in who you are and what you believe it’s a lot harder for these types of miracles to take place. So, how can you build yourself up to “level up”. First start that list of actions I gave to you in my previous blogs, the big one is allowing yourself to live a healthier lifestyle. Truly this is key, being clear minded and healthy is truly the key to your emotional and physical wealth. Meditate, change up your diet, change up your daily routine even if it’ is only’s something as small as getting up an hour earlier in the mornings to enjoy the sunrise. These little positive changes really do make such a huge impact. Don’t believe me, TRY IT!
I started making some of these changes in my life and for a while I thought, well this seems to be taking forever … .I don’t see any difference but much like losing weight, it’s gradual. You don’t see any changes for some time and then suddenly, one day you wake up feeling a bit happier. Or maybe you’re finding that your patience is getting better and little things aren’t irritating you any more. Could be that you see a physical difference in your skin, it’s glowing a bit more. These are all positive changes to building up that confidence. I have personally reached a level where I have been able to gain confidence in every aspect of my life, how I feel about myself, my attitude towards how others see me. Right down to the smallest details, for example if someone asks my opinion on a shirt they want to buy…..if someone trusts me enough to ask my opinion the least I can do is be honest with them. Like, hey that shirt belongs on the store rack not on your rack. Don’t just tell them what you think they want to hear, that’s people pleasing and total garbage! After all that’s what they are looking for, honesty. It’s truly liberating being able to make choices based on what’s 100% in YOUR best interest and can only lead to greater things in your life…..let it happen!
The feeling of confinement is crippling and does a number on your mental state and by confinement I mean mental confinement (feeling trapped). If you’re not sure how to move past the mental block then please reach out to a professional because it’s probably one of the biggest but most important hurdles to your self-discovery process. There is no greater feeling than just saying NO, with no reason,, no excuse, no justification…..just plain NO to something or someone that you’ve always reluctantly said yes to out of obligation (people pleasing reaction). No is a great word and should be used way more often. I mean obviously we want to help others, of course! Being kind and caring is fundamental to being a good human but at what cost, you must decide where to draw that line. That’s what needs to be relearned and exercised, finding that fine line is definitely a balancing act but hey, balancing a tightrope gives you great looking legs 😉
Sample situation: Someone you know (sister, brother, friend..doesn’t matter) that has zero responsibility and pisses all their money away on needless crap says, “hey can I borrow $100, NO is the answer. First of all you’ll likely never get it back so if $100 is a lot to you then it’s not something you can’t afford to give, especially since this situation is not likely to be a life or death situation. Secondly you’re just enabling this person to continue with their toxic lifestyle and that’s not doing them any favours either in reality.
So in closing, learn to say YES to yourself and NO to others when it doesn’t serve you in a positive way. This is a fairly short, but to the point post to get you thinking about where you are at when it comes to being confined, maybe you are and didn’t even realise it? Take care of you, figure out what is most important to your well-being. If you aren’t happy with yourself then you’ll never be happy with anyone else or make anyone else happy; that’s just simple math.
- Meditate
- Re-evaluate
- Contemplate
- Deliberate
Until Friday, Be Happy, Be Kind and most importantly, LOVE YOURSELF <3
