Thoughts on confidence
(This is an article from a previous website)
Some thoughts relating to confidence and comfortability. Originally written as an email.
From: "Cassie Chan"
Date: Sun Aug 24, 2003 10:15 pm
Subject: confidence
Hi,
Just something I would like to say here on a very specific topic. And no, it's not an attack or a ridicule or anything like that, just an insight I believe may be useful to some others.
--- Someone wrote:
>
> The biggest reason I hear is that they dont dress fully to a point
> where they are comfortable with their look, or to the point where
> they consider that they can go out and be confident.
You will never look perfect. It's a myth. Read the interviews with
the celebrities and you will find that most of them have some part of
their looks or body that they don't like. This is despite that the
rest of the world may believe them to be beautiful.
To bring that down to our level, on your first few nights out, you
will always feel inadequate in some way about your appearance. It's
normal. I look back on my first few outings, and now I cringed at how
terrible I looked, and wonder how come I didn't get any heckling from
people at the visual misfit I was.
And now I still manage to stuff up my lip line half the time, or I
feel I haven't shaven properly and I can just imagine my beard shadow
showing in a few hours time, but that's not stopping me going out.
Somewhere along the line, you just have to decide to go out with what
you do know. If you wait for the day to arrive when you have all your
looks and demeanor worked out, that day will probably never come.
But from that first day on, you start to learn much more and more
faster, because you are learning from doing, and putting yourself in
a live situation. It's like learning a foreign language, you can
learn from a textbook with tapes for years, but you will learn more
and learn faster if you lived in that foreign country for several
months.
And there is another subtle but critical factor, you gain experience.
Nothing will give you confidence except for experience. Do you feel
confident doing something when you do it for the first time? No. You
only feel confident after having done it many countless times. Hiring
the best make-up artist in the world may give you a stunning look,
but it's not going to give you experience nor confidence.
Now, I'm not saying you should go out with a skirt and breasts forms
with otherwise normal guys clothes (though why couldn't you if you
wanted to?). Everyone has to find their own balance, but if you get
too concerned about working everything out before venturing out, then
you may find it will never come, or worse, it will come too late.
Hope this helps,
Ta,
Cassie Chan