LPT - The Shame You Feel Hiding Your True Self Diminishes Your Confidence

*Better life guidance #10* Insha'Allah, when we try to be someone we are not by pretending, we suppress our true selves, which in turn suppresses our confidence. A kind of veil forms around our true identity in the form of shame we feel about being our authentic selves. This veil makes us unseen to those who appreciate and love our true nature. **True confidence stems from accepting that you only need to be your genuine self—embracing your truest, most sincere self without apology.** When you embrace this, you realise that anyone can have confidence, regardless of who they are, how they appear, or what their interests may be. You can be a scholar with confidence, a sportsman with confidence, someone who prefers solitude with confidence, or a survivor of hardships with confidence. Recognising and questioning the beliefs that cause our shame is the first step towards freeing ourselves from it. From there, we can adopt more positive and healthy beliefs to build a stronger and more accurate self-image. This is important because we always reflect our inner feelings to the world around us. It is better to project self-acceptance rather than shame. From my experience, many unhealthy beliefs originate in our early years, when we heavily depended on our environment—parents, family, and school—to shape our worldview. Therefore, any unresolved trauma or shame from that environment may have been passed on to us. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we project this worldview as we engage with others. This does not mean everything we learned in our youth was harmful. Think of this process as a spiritual and emotional cleansing—discarding unhealthy beliefs and reinforcing the beneficial ones. As Mary Jo Putney said, 'Competence is a great creator of confidence.' Addressing our shame to accept and understand ourselves more clearly helps us grow in competence in being who we truly are, which is essential for building self-esteem. However, adopting new, healthy, and realistic beliefs will not be easy or instantaneous. It requires confronting and letting go of long-held beliefs, perspectives, and attitudes. Remember, you are shedding the old self to become a renewed and improved version of yourself, Insha'Allah. As the wisdom goes, 'Once you are real, you can't be ugly, except to those who do not understand.' – Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit