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?