Insecurity
Insecurity is the biggest hurdle in the grooming of one’s personality. It is the state of being hesitant or dubious about the things and people around oneself or even about oneself at times. It is feeling under which the subject is under a constant impression of some kind of danger or lacks confidence to present him/ her in front of a group of people. Such people fear about their own values and this fear constantly push them backwards. They become unsure about their own competency. Another aspect of this feeling can be that the subject lacks faith in other people. And because of this, the subject tries to keep a distance from strangers. Such antagonistic thoughts keep the subject reminding of the transiency of the happy moments in life and keep the subject away from contentment. To some extent, every person is found to be suffering from insecurity; however, the degree of the ailment varies.
However, we cannot exactly categorize it to be an ailment. The problem somewhere lies within oneself. We cannot blame the feelings and declare them to be bad. Instead the problem lies in the fact that since we find ourselves helpless in front of our feelings and do not know to deal with them we start blaming our feelings for everything wrong in our life. And the best part is that we modify this aspect also as per our convenience, if we think that everything is going smoothly then we boast ourselves and if we find the graph of our problems ever rising then we start blaming our life and our feelings to be responsible for it. This is because our ego is too high to accept our failures we always wish to succeed, be it concerning our feelings.
A broader aspect towards life enables us to know that it is the feeling of the security that gives rise to the feeling of insecurity. A person who is contended in what he has starts becoming insecure the moment he start fearing that he might lose all this one day. Transiency is in the very nature of life. A person who accepts this fact starts moving towards stability.
The proverb 29:25 in the Holy Bible speaks that, “The fear of human opinion disables”. This means that when you start growing insecure, you start thinking of whet are the opinions that other people hold or what they think about you and this feeling of insecurity cripples you in several ways, especially your relationships. This is because falling in this state will make you more temperamental and dubious and you start firming your grip on the life of people affecting your security which start becoming a reason of the failure of the success of the relationship. Underneath this feeling of insecurity is a feeling of fear. There may be hundreds of reasons of this fear. People give away everything in relationship and except the same trust in that relationship. But the important question here is that, what is this everything? Most of the people here would answer the question with love. However, many a times, knowingly or unknowingly we tend to handover our fright, our doubts, our anxiety, and our stress to the other person in that relationship. And quite interestingly all these feelings are the ones that we somehow receive from other relationships and relationships we had in past. Such a relationship could transform into an emotional hell for both the partners.
There is a famous quote, “Everyone is self centered; it’s just the radius that differs”. Generally people when start shrinking their self centered radius, start becoming insecure. They tend to judge themselves from what the other people think of themselves and their competencies, especially with their partner. Quite interestingly, this basis for self judgment is as form as the thoughts of the partner and it grows along with it. This forms a very fragile foundation for the state of the mind of the subject since this causes the personality of the subject to be molded by the thinking of the partner and many a times by the supposition of the subject regarding the thinking of their partner. And from here, the feeling of insecurity is planted.
One should not confuse insecurity with humility. Humility recognizes a different state of mind and heart in which the subject tries and struggles with him and its confidence despite of understanding its failures. Humility is just a superficial objective assessment of the competencies of the subject. On the other hand insecurity concentrates on the emotional impairs.
Once there was a boy and a girl who were in love with each other. They were engineering students and while they were in college their love reached pinnacles. Shortly after completing their degree they got appointed on the post of system engineer in the same organization. They worked very hard day and night. They were happy with their life and planned to get married soon. But one day the girl got promotion and was appointed on the post of project leader. The boy was happy for her but was somewhere disappointed with him. The time past by and the boy started growing insecure about his relationship with the girl. He started making assumptions about what the girl felt for and thought about him. This is a story of many people who fail to hold their relationships and find themselves too small to stand in front of their fears.
Ambitions and selfdom are the two biggest reasons that let the seed of insecurity to grow. The more we contrast ourselves with the people around the more are we bound to become frustrated. It is unreasonable of us to expect the same earnings as that of other person with same qualifications, who put in the same effort as we do and work as hard as we do not because we do not deserve that income but because we are not destined for it. Acceptance is the greatest friend in this world, but sadly most of us consider it as our enemy. The moment we start accepting our life and ourselves more than half of our problems will vanish in the sir like a bubble.
However it is not the case that you might feel insecure every moment of your life. You might feel insecure for a day and comfortable the next day. This largely depends upon the people and surroundings you are in, some people feel cozy in their close relationships but struggle to look and act comfortably with other people especially at their work place. Generally this feeling arise from past experiences and relationships, especially the incidents of childhood affect the personality of the person to a great extent. Rejection during childhood, or physical or mental exploitation and even the failure of previous relationships cause a person to become insecure. Low sense of worth is the dominant basis of insecurity within a person.
Insecurity stars walking within a relationship when the focus of the subject starts shifting from the other person in the relationship to it. This makes the person self centered and full of fears. The hunger to prove itself and come of the crowd is never ending and before we realize our relationship reaches the edge of separation. The only solution to come out of this vicious circle is to have faith. This faith gives us the power to come out of all kind of difficulties. And this power develops within us the feeling of implausible freeing. The freeing here means to break all the chains and shackles of thoughts that limit our personality and sense of worth by judging ourselves with the assumptions of others and ourselves.
However sometimes it is too late for us to realize or to accept the fact that we are suffering from this emotional instability. But it is never too late to stand up for life. Mistakes that we commit in life should be taken as lessons to be learnt while moving ahead at the same time. But for that it is essential that you start believing in yourself. In phase of regaining of lost relationships, it is important that you believe in yourself and hold yourself upright. Until you trust yourself and have faith in yourself, none can have faith in you. No storm can break you if you are as strong as a mountain. Once you start believing in yourself people will start regaining faith in you. This power can also be achieved by increasing yourself worth; underestimating oneself is the worst crime ever one can commit to himself.
Numerous people resort to take help of meditation as a means of fixing the problem. However meditation cannot really help you in this problem directly since it is an abstract matter, an abstract ailment, one that is something within our thoughts and there is direct way to control our thoughts. But it definitely gives us that strength to deal with our thoughts and to make them more stable. Meditation clams our mind and our body and it becomes easy to identify oneself more deeply in a calmer state of mind and heart and it becomes easy for us to overcome the self centered thinking of ours. And in such state we can let go off not just the insecurity within us but the anxieties, the worries and all kind of pessimistic thoughts.
Buddhism speaks about the three categories of conceit. First one is concerning the superiority wherein the subject is constantly under the impression that he is superior to others. The second one is concerning the inferiority wherein the subject is constantly under the impression that he is inferior to others. And the last one is concerning the neutrality wherein the subject thinks of himself like other people.
It is important that we learn to retaliate to hard times or moments of depression. One can do so by enhancing the heights of efficiency. It is foolishness to sit back at allow anyone to injure your self esteem or to challenge it. People who allow other to do so fall prey to paralysis by analysis.
If at some time in life you realize that you are not worth anything and feel quite pessimistic about yourself then you should recall one thing that everyone here is destined to make some change around him/ her. A pessimistic assessment of oneself that is sincere and perceptive requires huge amount of audacity than the sense of apparition that lie beneath pride and smugness.