So I was on YouTube (instead of attending to my to-do list for today). Typical.
Thankfully though, something good came out of this procrastination. I came across this video called “5 Things Secure People Just Don’t Do” by registered clinical counsellor, Julia Kristina.
As someone who is in the process of becoming a more confident and secure person, I found this video to be really uplifting and insightful.
The points covered can be summarised as follows:
- Secure people don’t feel the need to control everything.
Secure people don’t have a need for over-control (an expression of insecurity). They don’t need to know who’s going to be there, what something’s going to be like, what the energy will be like. They trust that they will be able to adapt to the situation (whatever it is) and figure things out. Secure people are also able to set boundaries, say no and remove themselves from situations that do not sit well with them. They are not passive.
This resonated with me as I noticed my insecurity can show up in being overly concerned with how “things will be”. I also have the tendency to be passive and so I found Kristina’s observation that passivity, whilst it can seem like someone is being nice and accommodating, can actually be the result of fear. The fear of upsetting someone, the fear of somebody disagreeing with you etc.
To be honest with you, I need to stop caring so much.
2. Secure people don’t talk about themselves all the time.
Here, Kristina describes how secure people do not feel the need to prove themselves to others and how they have a deep sense of security, worth, love and belonging. She also notes that they don’t feel the need to shrink into themselves and never be proud of their achievements/accomplishments.
In other words, as Kristina says in the video, the mentality of a secure person when it comes to celebrating themselves is:
“It’s not that I am so great, it’s that I am grateful.”
I love that!
Recently, I’ve been keeping track of my daydreams and in a lot of them, I have noticed that when I think about achieving some great feat, I often focus on how other people will perceive me. It’s this mindset of:
“oh so now do you see me?”.
I believe that this stems from a lack of self-esteem (which I’m working on), a lack of self-belief/confidence and caring too much about others’ perceptions of me (both of which I am also working on).
It’s almost like I’m looking to others to tell me how wonderful I am. I do the whole affirmations thing and yes, I can feel myself becoming more confident but there’s still that part of me that’s desperate for approval, as I discussed in my “On being desperate for approval” post.
“I got bipolar confidence.
Wake up like “sh*t” then I feel like the sh*t
So I guess I’m the sh*t”
Yeah, guess I’m the sh*t.– Matt Champion
I guess everybody’s confidence fluctuates but feeling like you constantly need to show how cool or how great you are is something I think we could all do without.
I’ve been reminding myself that I do not exist to prove myself to others and that I need to develop the deep sense of inner security and worth that Kristina refers to.
You constantly try to prove yourself to others because you have not fully embraced self-belief.
3) Secure people don’t look at and point out other people’s flaws.
Here, Kristina discusses how secure people don’t feel the need to nit-pick at others or put people down for being different to them.
She talks about how, a lot of the time, we are judging others to protect ourselves. We don’t want to see what our own issues/ areas for healing are and so we project onto others.
On the Instagram caption for the above quote, Julia talks about how being more compassionate towards ourselves can help us be kinder towards others.
I need to work on this.
4. People who are secure don’t over-apologise.
Secure people find a balance between knowing when to take responsibility for their actions and not doing too much i.e. “I’m no good”, “I’m such a terrible person etc”.
Kritstina aptly states:
Take responsibility for the part that is yours, nothing more, nothing less.
5. Secure people know that they are not perfect and accept themselves as imperfect.
I loved this point because it accepts the reality of being a human (imperfection) without falling into the trap of self-pity, i.e. since I can never be perfect, I might as well stay here and struggle forever.
I have struggles I’m working through. You do too.
But we can still acknowledge our imperfect state whilst striving to do and be better.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
Kristina’s point about embracing our imperfection reminded me of something I wrote in a previous blog post: On Soulmates (“To the single people out there” Part 2):
Maybe really knowing ourselves can help us love ourselves more and then extend this love outwards. A love that acknowledges in the same way we all have our “issues”, others do too. In the same way I’m not perfect, nobody else is and so on and so forth.
All in all, this video has encouraged me as I continue the journey of parting from my insecure ways. I hope it does the same for you.
Thank you for reading. You can check out the full video here:
If you’re also working on overcoming insecurity, low self-esteem etc, let’s talk about it in the comments below! Also, feel free to add more things secure people just don’t do.
See you in my next blog post. ✌️
