4 Things you Probably don’t Know about Insecurity…

…and 1 thing you know all too well!

By Lian Brook-Tyler

1. Firstly, you already know that feeling insecure absolutely sucks!

At best, it bitches away at you from the shadows…

“You’re not good enough to do that.”, They’re all looking at you and thinking you suck!”, ”

It holds you back from doing the things in life that you really want to do or stops you enjoying the things you are doing.

It messes up your relationships and stops you being your best at work.

At worst it spirals into anxiety, a crippling lack of self-worth and confidence, and life-sapping doubt and fear. Ugh.

You knew that right? So here’s a few things you might not know…

2. Feeling insecure is down to your thoughts in that moment because we feel what we think.

That sounds ridiculously simple, doesn’t it? Too simple to be right. But it is right. That’s the way our minds work: our thoughts create our feelings.

“You’re not insecure, Syd. You just think you are.”

These are the words spoken by a psychiatrist to theosopher Syd Banks and which sparked a life-changing shift from being… or rather thinking he was… a negative, insecure person.

So next time you feel insecure, stop for a moment and notice what you’re thinking, then notice that the feeling is simply being created by an insecure thought.

3. Insecure thoughts are not inherently true.

I know they look super-realistic 3d technicolor true. But they’re not.

Next time you feel insecure and notice the insecure thought creating the feeling… and ask yourself ‘Is this really and truly true?’

Some useful ways to look at this are:

“Is the only way it can be?”

“Do I sometimes think about this thing differently?”

“Might someone else think about this differently?”

“What’s the inverse of this thought?”

You’ll notice that there’s not just this one way to think about anything and you’ll also notice that all sort of other feelings that can be created by different thoughts.

You’ll almost always get some distance and perspective, and therefore fresh thoughts and new feelings will flow.

4. Whilst they’re designed to seem very real and important and there to protect you in some way, most insecure thoughts aren’t helping you at all.

Ultimately yes, insecure thoughts are there to alert you to danger and to keep you safe. And back in the day, when we were spending far more of our time facing all kinds of life-threatening situations, our thoughts of fear and insecurity would have been absolutely serving us, they would have been keeping us alive.

But now, when the average person isn’t faced with many true fight or flight situations,

I’d bet that all of your insecure thoughts are complete rubbish and they’re not helping you to stay alive. In fact often quite the opposite, they often stopping you from really living… Closing you up, shutting down your connection to the world around and making you stay focused on yourself.

Next time you notice that you have an insecure thought, maybe ask yourself:

“Is this thought serving me?”

“Is there really a tiger about to eat me? No? So, is this really a life and death situation then?”

“What would be possible if I wasn’t so busy focusing on these insecure thoughts?

5. We don’t need to work on ourselves to make ourselves feel secure.

Our natural state is secure, happy, calm, curious, creative and generally feeling cool (and it’s only insecure thoughts that make it appear otherwise).

When we stop focusing on our insecure thoughts, we can learn, connect and play. We can have incredible lives and doing amazing things… all very naturally.

Without those thoughts… how you would be? What would you do? Where would you go?