The Potential Magic of Insecurity

If you take a moment to exist solely inside a dream, and the dream shows you living a life without insecurities, what do you see?  When I asked myself that question the other day, I didn’t get past the basic syntax of the question for at least forty-eight hours.  I was just stuck on whether or not the question would make sense to people who resided outside of my sometimes warped mind.  I came to the conclusion that it would.  

The interesting part of that dilemma is that I believe it makes sense for different people in different ways.  It’s all about the “what do you see” phrase at the end.  Here’s the whole question one more time.

If you take a moment to exist solely inside a dream, and the dream shows you living a life without insecurities, what do you see?

I determined that the “what” part could be different for different people and it could even be different based on the specific insecurity.  I also determined that this is NOT a shruggable question. Many, and I mean MANY questions in this life are met with a response from me that equates to a shrug and a “I really could care less.”  I do that because those things are about as important as which side of the toast you put the butter on.

This is different.  This question is important.  This is a topic that can alter and sometimes even destroy lives.  If you suffer insecurities, you understand that.  That’s why I think this question can be transformative.  I say that because if you are able to dissect / evaluate / deconstruct all of your insecurities, and you can use that to find a way out from under the weight of each one, you can make some dreams look a lot more like reality.  

So let’s break down the “what” part of that question and dive into the many “things” you might “see” in that dream.  I’m going to specifically focus on three of the most common causes of insecurities – body image, relationships, and personal expectations – but you can adjust what is discussed with each to hopefully find some answers to your own insecurities.

The reason for choosing those three insecurities is hopefully pretty obvious, especially the body image one.  Who do you know that is not at least partially insecure about some aspect of their body? I know no one.  Most people won’t admit it, but most people are absolutely insecure about something.

The second insecurity, relationships, can be based on love relationships, friend relationships, work relationships, parent/child relationships, etc.  Take a look at this and this.  The first is the list of the top fifteen insecurities reported by women.  The second is the top eight for men.  Notice any differences?  The first ELEVEN on the women’s list have to do with either physical appearance or relationship insecurity.  The men’s list has more emotion / job / money sprinkled in.  

I chose the third insecurity, personal expectations, for several reasons.  It’s broad, so it can relate to expectations about a job or finances, expectations about a personal goal or life vision, or even expectations about emotions or intellect.  So we’re going with those three for the purposes of this article.  And if you read enough about the multitude of insecurities found in men and women, you’ll notice that almost all insecurities can be grouped into one of those three main categories.

So here’s the main idea behind this article.  I am a big fan of seeing things as simply as I can.  I have a big, expansive, often ridiculous mind with an endless ability to consider infinite, sometimes creative, sometimes absurd, sometimes self-damaging ideas behind every topic, but in application, it helps me a great deal to simplify things that I’m personally working on.  

So when we look at those three major insecurity categories, we only really have to focus the end game on two scenarios:  change or acceptance.  We have insecurities.  We aren’t debating that.  But to get rid of them, or manage them, we either have to change them or learn acceptance of them.  It really can be as simple as that.  So here goes:

Change or Acceptance of Body Image Insecurities

I started blogging because I needed a really healthy hobby to take on in sobriety after twenty years of addiction to alcohol and tobacco.  Those two vices can have some pretty telling physical side effects.  When it comes to sobriety, the newer dependence on food has a definite physical side effect.  

In a short nutshell, these last twenty years have seen a man fluctuate in weight from 180 to 215, back and forth like a damn seesaw, sometimes a healthy 180, sometimes an alcoholic shell of a man who somehow weighs 180.  The same is true for the 215, too.  My physical strength is that of a medium sized cat because the only weight training I did for two decades was twelve ounces at a time, so five feet, ten inches tall and 215 pounds is not very healthy.

So now I’m out in a world with only a beatable sugar addiction and a need to drop thirty pounds and take pride in my physical appearance.  I’m insecure as hell about that.  This is my major “body issue” insecurity.  So in my dream, do I see change or acceptance?

In my case, change will bring on acceptance.  I will never accept myself the way I look right now.  In my dream – and I prefer these daydreams to occur in snapshots, because it’s the simplest form of a dream – I see a man sitting on the back porch at my parent’s beach house with a bunch of family and/or friends around, and I am confident enough to take my damn shirt off.  That’s it.  That is literally the extent of my dream. I’m forty-one years old and have never had interest in working out.  I do not see a ripped, bulging, six-packed man sitting on that porch.  My dream is perfectly ended and framed for life if that simpler picture is maintained.  

So what do you see when you close your eyes and dream about a life without the insecurity of a negative body image?  Is it attainable?  If it is, do you have the willpower to achieve it?  That’s probably the hardest part for me.  I struggle with the willpower.  I’ll get there, I wouldn’t dream if I didn’t believe that, but I know it takes work.  The realization of dreams often does.

But what if, in your dream, you only see acceptance of a negative body image?  Is it because the real dream is unattainable?  Is it laziness?  Apathy?  Is it a physical inability to ever attain that image?  

Some people are physically incapable, whether because of injury, arthritis, heart problems, genetics, etc. of ever being able to attain the ridiculous image they have in their own heads.  I’m not reinventing the wheel with some profound testament here. Everybody knows we shouldn’t look at models in their underwear and think, “I’m a loser and nobody will ever love me if I don’t look like that.”  That’s stupid and you know it.  Or do you?

Weight is obviously not the only cause of body image insecurities.  People have insecurities about their nose, ears, legs, a scar, a unibrow, gray hair, ugly knees, a goofy laugh, hairy arms, double chins, big feet, an awkward gait, a weird smile, curly hair, fat cheeks, and about four million more.  That list right there should tell us insecure people everything we need to know.  EVERYBODY has insecurities and most of them are stupid because we are NOT perfect human beings.  Even more, most insecurities matter to US about seven million times more than they matter to people we encounter.  Most people probably don’t even notice those things about which we are insecure.

That’s why I believe the true magic in realizing this dream of being free of body image insecurities is in acceptance.  Insecurity is all about confidence.  The magic is NOT in the image, it’s in the acceptance because the image can and will change.  The acceptance is the necessary piece as we get older.  And in a large number of body image insecurities, change CANNOT happen.  In those cases, acceptance is the only option.   So are you willing to accept them?

Think about it this way.  Say you are a woman, aged 35, and you think you need to lose twenty pounds after baby.  In your dream – this rational, coherent dream – you have lost the twenty pounds, plus five more, you have no sag under your tricep, your workouts have physically eaten the remaining cottage cheese, and you look in the mirror and want to jump your own bones.

Now here is why acceptance is important.  The opinion you have of your body image has not suddenly been blinded by this goal achievement.  You will constantly go through body image issues as you age because your body WILL change.  If you have learned acceptance of what your body looks like, you will much more easily handle those changes.  I cannot tell you how to get there – that’s on you – but I can tell you this much. If it is worthy of an insecurity, it is worthy of either change or acceptance.  Those are much, much easier to live with than insecurity.

The last issue under this topic is one I struggle with mightily.  What happens when you will not accept your body image insecurities and you will not do what is necessary to change them?  I have given myself two options, and I’m not willing to do either one.  In that case, there is the truth about how I handle it and then there is the brutal honesty of how I NEED to handle it.

How I handle it now is through my good friends procrastination and avoidance.  “I’ll start a diet tomorrow” and “I don’t really want to talk about it right now” are set on repeat in my life.  I’ve been struggling with food addiction for over a year.  I repeated versions of those same statements for two DECADES as an addict.  I have some experience with them. 

But consider this:  insecurities aren’t that much different than addictions.  They are a drag on your life every single day, they overwhelm your mind, they eat at you, they embarrass you.  Every time you look at your future and dream, that insecurity is not there, but you are powerless to fix them in the present.  All of this is also the description of addiction.

The brutal honesty that I must have with myself is that I’m too freaking weak to fight this thing that is creating this insecurity.  It’s my own damn fault and anything less than admitting that is bullshit.  This insecurity is MY fault.  At the very least, it’s my MIND’S fault.  I can do something about it.  I know I can.  It doesn’t even require a full blown diet. If I could just cut a thousand calories a day and do some moderate exercise for thirty minutes a day, I’d lose weight, feel better, have more energy, and most importantly, feel better about myself.  Change takes guts.  

And that’s what we want right there.  We just want to feel better about ourselves.  Insecurities about our physical appearance have beaten us down for long enough.  That’s why this bears repeating: If this “thing” is important enough to be worthy of an insecurity, it is important enough to be worthy of either change or acceptance.

Change or Acceptance of Relationship Insecurities

I believe relationship insecurities improve via two typical occurrences:  age and marriage.  I work with high school kids every single day, and there is not a more insecure population when it pertains to their relationships.  Personally, I have felt insecurities in relationships at various points in my life, but most of them had to do with my own addictions.  I just don’t recall this type of insecurity affecting me severely outside of that reasoning.  I think part of that is opinion based.  To me, relationship insecurity is not a mature insecurity.

Think back to high school.  At any one point, you had three besties, but only one was a real bestie.  The other two told you they were your bestie and you told them the same, but both of you knew something was amiss.  Then there were three other friends who may or may not be trying to steal your boyfriend and that was the only reason to be friends with you.  But your boyfriend was getting on your nerves and you liked the new guy who was just too cute to even talk to even if you were single.  Then there were three other acquaintances that were friends with some other boy you might like if he fixed his hair, but those were just convenience friends.  That is a dozen different relationships to be insecure about.  That sounds exhausting.

But there were more, weren’t there?  You had to deal with your parents and your natural insecurities for wanting (or not wanting) to live up to their expectations.  You had to deal with terrifying insecurities about teachers at school who wanted to fail you because your wardrobe was better than theirs.  In your spare time, you had a job at Target and there was a cute guy on the next cash register and a new girl that was trying to steal your hours.  You literally dealt with insecurities with upwards of twenty to thirty people per day.  

Some of those go away immediately when you get married.  If, of course, yours is a happy, healthy, full-of-communication-and-love kind of marriage.  If not, you live in insecurity and you walk on eggshells.

As you age, you drop the friends that were never friends.  The friends you have at twenty-five or thirty are likely the friends you will still have at sixty.  Age means you don’t deal in the bullcrap you dealt with when you were younger.  Why?  Because you finally know how to communicate.  And good, honest communication is the answer for almost any relationship insecurity.

I don’t suffer from this one very often.  I have an amazing marriage and my communication with my kids is phenomenal now that I’m sober.  So family is good.  Friends, not so much.  I basically pushed them all away in the last few years of active addiction and I’m insecure about building any of those relationships back up.  As for work, I’m good.  I wouldn’t change a whole lot about my relationship insecurities as a whole.

If you struggle with this type of insecurity, no matter who the other party is, I highly recommend putting on the big boy pants and simply saying, “I need to talk to you.  I need this relationship to build me up more than it has been.”  This life is too damn short.  Why worry about other people when you have the best tool God equipped us with to help correct those insecurities?  He gave us the ability to communicate.  We also have this awesome ability to both express and feel emotions.  Don’t sacrifice your own emotions because of fear and insecurity.  It’s just not worth it.

Change or Acceptance of Personal Expectations Insecurities

This one is my biggie.  I am forty-one years old and I have achieved very, very few of the personal expectations I have made of myself in my life.  My goals and dreams and expectations were always gigantic and larger than life, and I depended mostly on luck to get there.

That’s not true in every instance.  I’ve always worked hard on things I’ve loved.  In high school, I spent every minute of sunlight on the golf course because I was going to be a professional golfer.  I failed at that.  In college, I decided to try to expand my reach with singing and I sang in a country music showcase that about three thousand people attended and I sang at festivals and carnivals and I made a demo tape.  I clearly never became a famous singer.  Failed again.

I took a job out of college in the banking business.  Hated it.  Failed at that.  I started a business.  Lost a bunch of money.  Failed at that.  I went back to school to become a teacher.  I like it most days, but it doesn’t inspire me like I once thought it might.  That, to me is a failure.  I wrote a novel.  Almost got it published.  Almost.  Failed again.  I spent twenty years as an addict.  That’s an entire adulthood failure.

Most days, I wish I was born without the ability to dream big.  But I still do it, even today.  I do nothing but set myself up for failure, and yet I keep doing it.  I walk out of my house every single morning, and I very, very seldom walk out with a confidence that I am going to be badass and achieve greatness that day.  There is almost never a day I leave the house and think, “Today is the day I’m going to get my big idea that makes me rich and famous.”  Well, that’s not necessarily true.  I stupidly say that almost every day, but I very, very seldom believe it.

It can be a rough existence living with the feeling of never having accomplished your life’s goals.  It leaves you with an insecurity that is hard to put into a single description.  My life right now sits at the bottom of a giant sliding board.  In high school, when it was inspiring to dream, I was at the top of that damn slide just pushing people down it if they got in my way.  In college, I discovered depression and then alcohol, and I started sliding.  It wasn’t fast, but after twenty years, you damn sure aren’t near the top of that slide anymore.

What’s worse is that now I’m trying to climb UP the same slide, and everybody knows how hard it is to climb up a slide.  It’s even worse when two decades of insecurities have control of my body and mind and I’m left just sitting on the bottom of the slide waiting for some kind of magical flying unicorn to stop by and carry me back up to the top.

That’s why change or acceptance is necessary.  I either have to inspire myself to keep dreaming no matter the failure rate, or accept that I was never cut out to dream big.  I admit that would be a little deflating, but I truly believe that once the acceptance became part of my life, I would be far less stressed and insecure because it takes very little effort – physically or mentally – to be average.

So what is this magic you speak of?

Remember that first question?  If you take a moment to exist solely inside a dream, and the dream shows you living a life without insecurities, what do you see?  Let’s tackle the full scope of that dream to finish out this article.

The snapshot of that dream sees me with no more body image insecurities, no relationship insecurities, and no insecurities relating to my personal expectations.  That means I have either changed the things I had lost confidence in, or I learned to accept them.

The very thought of that reality is, in and of itself, magical.  But that’s not the only reason it would be magical.  It would also be magical because we would be required, through the daily maintenance of acceptance, to never take those old insecurities for granted.  We would acknowledge their former existence, but instead of them dragging us down, they would lift us to places we did not allow ourselves to explore or enjoy or appreciate.  Our consciousness of their history in our lives would fuel us to never repeat them.  Better still, they would fuel us to do things that once terrified us.

I don’t know if magical is the right word.  But to live this life with a humble confidence that comes with experience and age and a giant middle finger at all my old insecurities would be pretty damn magical to me.