WHEN YOUR SELF CONFIDENCE IS DESTROYED

Have you ever found yourself buried in self pity, feeling like you are not worth anything, you are a no body and you feel like no one cares anymore? Have you ever had your friend, teacher, father, mother, sister, brother, child, husband, wife, boss, strip you of all your self confidence and self worth by their actions, demeaning words, and so on?

I am sure most of you reading this article today are familiar with what I am talking about today. Where you are in class and the teacher always puts down any contribution you give, where you are always laughed at and made fun of for no reason. When friends gang up against you because they think you are different and you don’t fit in. When your parents think you are nothing, when they tell you your other siblings are better than you, when they alienate you and don’t even take notice of your pain. When your siblings don’t accept you, when your spouse ignores you and the world only revolves around them. When your friend, partner takes you for granted and ignores you. When your boss is always asking other peoples opinion and ignoring your opinion even when it is right. When you boss tells you in the face “I don’t like you” and does not pay attention to your work. You can add on to the list, these are but few of the examples that I thought I could use to introduce the topic.

WHAT DO YOU DO???

Yes what do you do? I am no expert but will share with you some of the things that have helped me to get back my self confidence, dignity and achieve my goals in different circumstances. I have grown up in a supportive family and my parents and siblings have always been there for me and encouraged me when I faced challenges.

When you are facing a crisis that is chewing up your self confidence, the first and most important thing is to accept that you have a challenge ahead of you, and that you and you alone have to stand up and face this challenge. Find a support group that can help you, be it your family, friends, church, professional assistance, people you trust and so on. Do not suffer in silence.

 What do I mean? If you are in denial and accept the bad words, statements and situations that are tearing your confidence apart as normal, your self esteem and confidence will keep deteriorating until it’s no more.  But if you accept that people around you are pulling you down, it is time to raise yourself up. You are your own enemy, if you don’t have the initiative to pull yourself up, you will stay down there and people will continue to stamp on you until you are completely destroyed.

 In one of my continuous studies I found myself facing a supervisor who never liked me, did not like my work, my skin colour and always put me down.  It was hard for me to understand and accept the situation. After a couple of months I realised that things are not changing and I am being pulled down and down. I told myself, ‘pick yourself up and face the challenge’. I looked back from where I started, who I was before I met this supervisor, what I achieved and my goals, I stood up to face the challenge. I worked hard, I focused on what I wanted to achieve, I remembered that it is me who has to stand up and prove myself strong and confident. And after some years I stood up and faced my supervisor, told him about all the prejudices that he had against me and told him what I wanted. I was confident, I stood up against my challenge and I excelled.  My supervisor was shocked and from this day on he started to respect me. And I still respected him.

If I did not stand up to face the challenges I had, I would not have achieved my goal, though my self confidence was bruised, I managed to get it back and still stand with it today.

So if you are facing challenges of whatever kind, do not give up, do not lose hope, focus on your goal and get back the self confidence and dignity that you once had before you met the challenge. It is never too late. You can always stand up again.

To my girls and women out there who feel like nobodies and their dignity and self esteem has been destroyed, it is time to stand up and take it back. During my challenges I had a great support group and they stood by me, they listened to me when I needed to talk, they encouraged me, they gave me hope. You can also be the one to encourage, the one that gives hope, and you can help someone to get their self esteem, self-confidence and dignity back.

Eyes on the Goal!

It was in kindergarten that I looked forward to go to primary school. That time I did not even know what working hard was but all I knew was I had a goal, and that goal was to go to primary school. The chance finally came, I was now in primary school, and my goals changed every year. Each year I looked forward to moving to the next class. As each school year came to an end, I looked forward to passing my exams and go to the next class. That was my goal. And then came the final year of primary school by this time my goal was to go to Secondary school. Because one was not sure if they will be selected to go to the government secondary school, the competition was always high, but at the end of the day my goal never changed.

When I finally got into secondary school, I was very excited to see how different it was from primary school and for me that is where I learned how to work hard. Because here it was not just a matter of passing from one class to another, the grades mattered. You had to pass very well so that your certificate had the right grades. These grades determined your future goals. Here the goals were different; I had to work hard to pass so that I go to University. When I was in primary school I did not have any idea of University studies but when I got to Secondary school I realized this was important for my future. Yes I also started thinking of the future. What was my future any way? For me the future at this point was University education, I always wanted to be an independent person; I always told myself “I will work hard to achieve my goals”. And by the grace of God I went through my education and managed to reach my goals.

From primary school through to Secondary school, I saw most of my colleagues drop out of school, for different reasons, some got married, others just thought they don’t like school anymore, while there were others who dropped out because they had family problems which were beyond their control and they were just caught in the whole thing, and as children they had no control, it was sad. BUT no matter what you have been through and though circumstances have changed and made it difficult to achieve your goals, don’t give up. Never ever give up, you can always achieve your dreams.

So, some of you are wondering OK, so what is this all about? I will tell you, it is about having goals in life and working towards them each day of your life. I would like to encourage each one of you to have a goal or goals in life. These should be your focus, and work towards them. As you achieve these goals one by one, no matter how long it takes, you will develop skill, strength and endurance.

When you see successful people, it is out of sacrifice, strength, endurance and most of all GOALS, they had goals and for each goal they achieved it strengthened them to focus on the next one.

I hope we can look back and search our hearts for those goals which we had, have we achieved them? How far are we from achieving them?

I look forward to hearing your testimonies.