Insecurity can be defined as a feeling of inadequacy, or not being good enough. While most people experience feelings of insecurity on an occasional or situational basis, a persistent feeling of insecurity is not common and can be quite debilitating in one’s life. Learning how to spot and address insecurity is essential to living a productive and fulfilling life.
One of the most significant factors impacting insecurities we may harbor is the way we think. When we hold onto negative thoughts it can cause our insecurities to fester. Thus, learning how to challenge any negative thoughts we may have can be beneficial in helping to eliminate insecurity.
Affirmations
If you want to think positively about yourself you must affirm positive things about yourself on a regular basis. Implementing affirmations is one way to directly challenge negative thoughts you may possess about yourself.
An affirmation can be a positive sentence, phrase, or even a single word that speaks to the good things about you. Repetition of these affirmations daily or even as often as throughout the day eventually works to reshape your internal dialogue and replaces negative ideas about yourself with positive ones.
Positive Self-Talk
Positive self-talk is very closely related to the affirmation process in that it involves restructuring the internal dialogue you have about yourself. Affirmations can actually be used as a means of engaging in positive self-talk. The goal is to change the way you think of and speak about yourself to something more positive.
This requires a high level of awareness so you can spot when you’re thinking or saying something that may be negative and feeding your insecurities. Once you are aware of this you must then consciously change your thoughts/speech to something positive. This then changes the way you think about yourself towards something more positive.
Encouraging People
Having people around you who can remind you of how great you are is another good way to challenge negative thoughts. At times it can be hard to pull yourself out of a negative frame of mind, especially if you struggle with being self-critical.
Surrounding yourself with people who can uplift you, remind you of the good person you are, and remind you of the things you have accomplished can help you embrace the good about yourself and shift from negative to positive thinking.
Track Successes
Another strategy for getting rid of negative thoughts is to track your successes. It can be quite easy to focus primarily on your flaws and failures, particularly if you deal with perfectionism. There can be a tendency to maximize the bad and overlook the good.
However, when we have a record of the ways in which we have thrived and succeeded in the past, it reminds us of our capabilities and empowers us to continue moving forward. Seeing what we have done empowers us with confidence and motivates us. This then helps us to eliminate insecurities about our abilities.
While not necessarily simple, eliminating insecurity is something that can be done by addressing our negative thoughts. Learning to replace negative thinking with more positive thinking can help us to become more confident and push us to pursue more things in life.
Thus, taking small steps to address and challenge negative thoughts is a measure that should be pursued as a means of working towards living a more secure and confident life.
