How to Overcome Insecurity

Learning how to overcome insecurities is important if you want to live a happy and fulfilling life.

We all have our problems, concerns and worries. These are completely normal. But if you are faced with severe insecurities that prevent a sense of flourishing and happiness in your life, then you need to take action.

The good news is that being insecure is something that can be overcome.

But to do so you need to own the problem, stop making excuses and put the onus on yourself to sort it out.

Learning to deal with insecurities will give you confidence, peace of mind and less stress.

What Are Insecurities?

An insecurity is a feeling of unworthiness.

It is a sense that you do not deserve what you have in life or that you don’t deserve anything better.

It is a fear that you aren’t good enough and never will.

It is a smallness of soul.

What Causes Insecurities?

The main cause of insecurities are your upbringing and your formative experiences in life.

The environment that you grew up in shaped the way you think about yourself and how you relate to the outside world.

If you developed critical self talk as a child and formed the belief that you weren’t good enough then that pattern of thinking is likely to stay with you as an adult.

Types of insecurities

There are many areas of our lives where people often feel insecure.

These commonly include:

  • Physical insecurities: These are insecurities about your body and your appearance.
  • Relationship insecurities: These are insecurities experienced within a relationship normally relating to lack of self worth and feeling like you don’t deserve your partner.
  • Social insecurities: These are insecurities about how you engage in social interactions. This could include social anxiety, concerns about fitting in and challenges making friends.
  • Professional insecurities: These are insecurities involving your performance at work and whether you feel valued professionally.

14 Tips To Overcome Insecurities

I break down my advice on overcoming insecurities into five broad categories:

  • Confront
  • Reframe
  • Challenge
  • Build Anew
  • Avoid Common Traps

Confront

  1. Face your feelings: You will never get anywhere if you try to ignore your insecurities. Accept them, acknowledge them and feel them. They are real and you cannot wish them away. It is crucially important that you accept them and face them.

Reframe

  1. See your insecurities as feedback: Physical pain in your body is feedback that something isn’t right. So is emotional pain. Your insecurities are trying to tell you something about yourself, something important. Once you see them as a source of valuable feedback your perspective changes. Instead of getting down about them you can thank them for indicating an area where you can improve your life.

Challenge

  1. Challenge your negative thoughts: When negative thoughts arise, challenge them with logic. How realistic are your fears? Are your fears really true? If they are, are they as bad as your mind makes them out to be?

Build Anew

  1. Learn to be an optimist: Insecurities are negative and pessimistic thoughts. They always focus on what is wrong and what might go wrong. Focus your thinking on the positive aspects of yourself and the positive aspects of your life and learn to be optimistic about what the future holds. The more attention and energy you give the good things in life the less room there is for negative thinking.
  2. Focus on developing your strengths: Insecure thinking draws attention to your weaknesses. That’s fine, everyone has weaknesses. But everyone also has strengths. If you struggle to overcome your weaknesses it might help to start with focusing on your strengths and developing those.
  3. Develop magnanimity: Magnanimity means “greatness of soul.” It is a virtue in which you strive to be great but humble. Sometimes people struggle to develop a positive mindset because they fear that they will become arrogant. Developing magnanimity allows for success but without the arrogance.
  4. Surround yourself with positive people: As the saying goes you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. If you surround yourself with insecure people who lack ambition you will adopt that way of thinking. If you surround yourself with people who have a humble confidence and optimistic attitude then you will adopt that way of thinking.
  5. Celebrate your wins: When you are feeling insecure it can be hard to celebrate the good things in life. In fact it can even be hard to recognise them sometimes. But it is important for your self-esteem to recognise when you achieve a goal, no matter how small.
  6. Take care of your physical and emotional self: Feelings of insecurity can be made worse when you aren’t taking care of yourself. Developing healthy routines will help keep your body and mind in optimum condition and will support positive thinking.

Avoid Common Traps

  1. Don’t live in fear: Insecurities amplify fears. There is nothing wrong with fears but you can’t let them dictate to you. Whatever your worst-case scenario is, it probably won’t happen. If you live your life trying to avoid bad outcomes you hold yourself back from good outcomes.
  2. Let go of what you can’t control: There are many things in life that you can’t control. While some fear and insecurity is understandable here it is wasted energy. Insecurity should be a trigger for a change of behaviour. But if it is something that you can’t control then do your best to let go of it as best as you can.
  3. Avoid perfectionism: Insecurity has a tendency to breed perfectionism. You get so afraid of failure that you obsess over every little detail. Aim for good, not for perfect. That means accepting imperfection without letting it turn into insecurity.
  4. Avoid situations and people that make you feel insecure: This is not always possible but where you can try to avoid situations you know will bring you down. If there are people, places or events that you know trigger your fears and insecurities then do what you can to remove yourself from those situations and triggers.
  5. Stop trying to win others’ approval: One of the causes of low self-esteem is a need to have others give you validation and approval. Your self-worth should be based on what you think about yourself, not about what others think of you. Sure, what others think of you can be valuable feedback and this isn’t an excuse to treat people poorly. But if you depend on others to make you feel good about yourself, you will be disappointed. You need to develop the ability to give yourself validation.

Conclusion

Learning how to overcome your insecurities is not an easy or quick task.

But it is possible with a little bit of determination and the right attitude.

The key thing is to face your fears, reframe your attitude and build the mental attitude and resilience you need to become a positive thinker.