Let's start with insecurities,
And particularly when it comes to your relationship.
And I like to call,
Or I want to divide,
I want to offer you the idea of dividing insecurities.
Because I think,
From what I learned in my experience,
Personal and professional,
I would call them the obvious insecurities.
For example,
When you have gained or lost body weight,
Your body has changed,
You might feel insecure,
And you know it.
You know,
I feel insecure about my body.
I feel insecure about how I look.
Another obvious insecurity is,
For example,
In your business or at your job,
When you know you're properly prepared for a meeting,
For presentation,
Whatever it is.
And you know that I feel insecure because I might not be able to answer the questions.
I might not be able to bring it across the way I want to.
So you're very aware of your insecurities.
They are very obvious to you.
But often,
When it comes to relationships,
The romantic ones,
They are not so obvious.
One example,
And I just put it out there that probably all of you have gone through,
Is jealousy.
When you see your partner talking to someone else,
You feel jealous.
And the thing is,
You don't know at the time,
If you're not aware of it,
That it's your insecurity that's driving this feeling.
But you blame it on your partner.
So you might have an argument later,
Or you might act in a way that,
I ignore them now for the rest of the evening or the day.
Or you have an argument later in terms of,
You did this,
You did this.
And this is why I feel jealous.
But it's not so obvious to you that it's your insecurity that has driven that behavior,
That has driven that feeling.
And I want to share with you a personal story.
It happened a couple of years ago,
When my partner and I,
We moved to China.
And it was just three months before the pandemic started.
And I was working as an English teacher at the time.
And because I was new in that job,
I was new to China,
The parents didn't know me that well.
So I didn't have much to do.
And my partner,
He never said to me,
These are my expectations,
Why you have so little to do.
But it was always when he called me after he finished his work,
And he was on his way home,
Called me and said,
What's for dinner?
And I was like,
Oh,
My God,
What should I cook?
Every time he called me after work,
I knew this question would come.
And I would think about what to cook all day.
And at one point,
I felt so pressured.
And I felt so annoyed that I told him,
I said,
You put me under pressure,
You have these expectations of me.
So I attacked his behavior,
His words,
That was my reaction.
And at the time,
I was totally oblivious to the fact that it was due to my insecurities.
Because for me,
It was the first time in my life that I was on a schedule to cook regularly.
And I didn't know what to cook.
Is it good enough?
Is it full of nutrition that we need?
Is it tasty enough?
How do I have the ingredients?
Will I get all the ingredients?
It was all of these insecurities in me,
Bubbling up,
Making me feel overwhelmed.
But I didn't see that.
Because I wasn't aware.
I was just seeing,
Oh,
He is doing that.
So that behavior triggers me.
So I attack that behavior.
But when you're aware that that trigger is actually coming from one of your insecurities,
Whatever that might be,
In my case,
In that situation,
It was,
I didn't know what to cook,
How to do it.
As soon as I became aware that,
Hey,
It's my insecurity,
It's me,
I could talk to my partner,
I could tell them,
Look,
I feel overwhelmed.
I don't know if it's good enough.
I don't know if you like it.
I don't know if the variety is good.
I feel insecure.
And your behavior is triggering me.
I have that in my head that you have these expectations,
And I need to perform.
And it makes me feel insecure.
As soon as I was aware and communicated that to him,
He could tell me that,
No,
I'm fine if we just have bread and butter.
I'm okay with that.
I was like,
What?
Seriously?
And he was,
Yeah,
Of course.
I'm going to put pressure on you if you don't want to cook.
I get it.
I was like,
Okay,
Amazing.
So talking about it,
Becoming aware of it,
Good thing to do.
The general rule is,
Or long story short to say,
When you lack confidence in whatever you do,
99% of the time,
It's because you feel insecure.
And the insecurity is usually driven by the fear.
For me,
With my cooking school,
It was,
I feared that I wasn't good enough.
I wasn't good enough a cook.
I wasn't good enough a housewife.
I wasn't good enough making him happy with my cooking.
So my question to you is,
What do you think is your fear behind the insecurities that you have?
And what behavior does your feeling insecure cause?
There are different modalities out there,
EFT,
Energy work,
Et cetera,
Et cetera.
All of them have their truths.
All of them are amazing as soon as they resonate with you.
And I believe in the mind.
What's going on in your head is how you create your reality.
So when we come back to the insecurity,
That is a feeling.
I feel insecure.
My action is leashing out on my partner because of the trigger.
But behind that feeling is a thought.
And that thought could be,
I don't think I'm good enough.
I don't know what to do.
Having these steps in place,
When you think about your reactions,
What feeling does your reaction is created from?
And if you have that feeling,
What is then the thought behind it?
If you have this overwhelmed feeling of insecurity,
Of lack of confidence,
Whatever that feeling might be that makes you feel uncomfortable,
Invite it in,
Sit with it.
And when you at that point,
Where you feel like,
I want to stop now.
This is too uncomfortable.
Just give it maybe another five to 10 seconds.
And then you say,
Thank you.
Off you go.
You stand up and you shake it off.
