Photo: Steve Prezant / Corbis
As you accept yourself
Unique instead of perfect: Of the great luck to stand by yourself, his style and his weaknesses - no matter what.
Sometimes we meet people and just think: Wow! Not because they are unearthly beautiful or a walking lexicon. But because they are bursting with self-confidence . Say your opinion and bend for no one. We stand in admiration next to each other and ask ourselves: how do they manage that? Because it is not so easy to stand by yourself, your opinion and your small weaknesses, because we want to "belong".
If you want to boost your self-confidence , you have to stop comparing yourself to others. Because as soon as we do that, we always find something to complain about. But our peculiarities and edges make us unique. Why is it so hard for us to accept us? Also, because we often do not notice our weird little peculiarities. Our traits are so obvious to us that we do not even notice which of them make us unique.
How to find these hidden treasures? "By, for example, thinking about when the last time something was so much fun that you lost the sense of time, " said psychologist Veit Lindau ("Love Radical"). We can learn a lot about ourselves from these moments of happiness: are we impulsive and happiest when we go for a swim in the lake at night? Or very sensitive, because we feel most comfortable when we are working on our little plant in the garden?
One more way to recognize our little uniquenesses: ask our loved ones. Because our self-image is quite distorted, because we are too strict with us. If we get honest feedback from the people we really trust, we'll see each other more clearly. Because just behind our annoying pages often hide a few noteworthy features that we might also have overlooked.
By the way, one should not be fooled: even if not all friends interpret our strange peculiarities as well-meaning as we do, they often like us for that very reason. So we do not have to perfect ourselves and run around in sunshine mode 24 hours a day. Through our character barbs we are even perceived by others even properly.
Anyone who is constantly trying to maintain an impeccable façade is above all one thing: stressed out and permanently frustrated because one hangs over an unattainable ideal and thus unnecessarily puts pressure on it. Anyone who knows his strengths and weaknesses - and makes no secret of it - comes across confident and sympathetic, that also does the love and friendships good. Because the happier you are, the less you squat around.
So staying true to yourself is worth it. Look at it this way: You should nurture the friendship with yourself best.
