Skip to main content

Self confidence

A nanny is hugging a child and telling her in slow monotonous voice "You is smart, you is intelligent, you is strong". Child is listening with wide eyes.

This was a scene from the movie "The help". We did not have nannies when we are growing up. But our parents told us these things. And we became smart, intelligent and strong.

And brimming with self confidence.

Until the day our lives changed for ever. We were made to leave our parents to live in a  new house.

This news house was where all the statements about us were meant to be wrong. This is where our self confidence was broken systematically,  until no one can find it even with a microscope.

I don't want to put the blame completely on in-laws if living in joint family or on husband if not. It could be we ourselves. Due to social conditioning. Suddenly our focus should turn to cooking, cleaning and maintenance of the home and caring for family. We who hardly knew the difference between green dal and tur dal are suddenly supposed to cook thrice a day, each time delicious special meals. Our values are decided on how well we cook rice and sambar, how round are our dosa and chapatis and how clean our house is any time of the day. Every one tells us this fact and we start believing it and trying very hard for this new standard.

We try so hard that we stumble in each step. We make mistakes and get ridiculed for these, cry in secret. It seems that harder we try, farther is our goal. Of becoming perfect home maker. This makes us depressed, we start telling ourselves that we will never be good cooks, never be good wives and never be good at anything. 

Society plays also plays a very huge role here.  It tells that a married woman need to be good wife, good mother and NOTHING ELSE. How dare she pursue her career not taking care of her children? Why does she dress like that? Is she from a respected family or not? And so on.


Self confidence is one of the most important skills. And this is how most women lose it in the course of their marital life.

What women need to do now is re-build that confidence.

Whole world is there to judge you. Find faults with you. Point your mistakes. You don't have join them in. At least you have to be on your side.

One way of building that confidence in yourself is , whenever you get self doubt, whenever your mind starts blaming you for everything under the sky, take a deep breath. And delete that negative thought. Delete it completely, even from recycle bin.

And when you think about your positive qualities, amplify that thought. By a million times.

 And this next method may sound silly. But it works for me. Stand straight or sit straight. With your back erect. This posture makes you feel confident immediately.

Practice being confident. ALWAYS.

Because we women need self confidence. To survive in this world.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Someshwara shataka

ಚರಿಪಾರಣ್ಯದ ಪಕ್ಷಿಗೊಂದು ತರು à²—ೊಡ್ಢಾಗಲ್ ಫಲಂ ಈವಿದಾ ಮರಗಳ್ ಪುಟ್ಟವೆ ಪುಷ್ಪವೊಂದು ಬಳಲಲ್  à²­್ರಂಗಕ್ಕೆ ಪೂವಿಲ್ಲವೆ ನಿರತಂ ಸತ್ಕವಿಗೋರ್ವ ಗರ್ವಿದಂ ನೃಪ ತಾಂ ಲೋಭಿಯಾಗಲ್ ನಿಜಂ ಧರೆಯೊಳ್ ದಾತರು ಪುಟ್ಟರೆ ಹರ ಹರಾ ಶ್ರೀ ಚೆನ್ನ ಸೋಮೇಶ್ವರ Will a bird in the wild go hungry just because one fruit tree dries up? If one flower withers, will not the bee get any flowers? If one haughty king is miserly, will there be no patrons (of poetry) on this earth? ಕೆಲವಂ ಬಲ್ಲವರಿಂದ ಕಲ್ತು ಕೆಲವಂ ಶಾಸ್ತ್ರಂಗಳೋದುತಂ ಕೆಲವಂ ಮಾಳ್ಪವರಿಂದ ಕಂಡು ಕೆಲವಂ ಸುಜ್ಙಾನದಿಂ  ನೋಡುತಂ ಕೆಲವಂ ಸಜ್ಜನಸಂಗದಿಂದಲರಿಯಲ್ ಸರ್ವಜ್ಞನಪ್ಪಂ ನರಂ ಪಲವಂ ಪಳ್ಳ ಸಮುದ್ರವೈ ಹಾರ ಹರಾ ಶ್ರೀ ಚೆನ್ನ ಸೋಮೇಶ್ವರ Learning from wise men, reading from good books, observing others  work and learning from good company, these are the ways a man becomes omni-scient (sarvajna - one who knows everything). Just like many streams join together to make an ocean. P.S. 1) If you find some of my wordings in this shataka is wrong, please let me know. It is a 40 year old memory. 2) There are also...

Hair care and me ??

I delayed writing this post for I was not sure whether I am entitled to write this post. If I put my photo along, I should also add that I do not use Dove shampoo, so that it will serve as a warning to people , if they don't use a proper shampoo, their hair might also look like mine :-( :-( :-( Things (on my head) were not this bad always. I had long black and reasonably thick hair, nicely plaited, when I was a child. In fact I would be sitting on my plaits - they were so long. And to top it all, one of relatives used to say " you say you will be taller and your hair will say it will be longer" or something like that. (Now I have ended up 5.2 ft  and my hair also short sob....) Back then, how did I nourish my hair?I did not do much in fact. But mere paas maa thi. She would religiously oil my hair - everyday. But not soak my head in oil. She would just put half a teaspoon of oil to my head. Then brush my hair nicely and put 2 tight plaits before sending me to school. T...

Danuvettiddu

We Hegdes from Uttara Kannada, Dakshina Kannada, Shimoga districts of Karnataka belong to a brahmin sub sect called Havyaka Brahmins. We have some traditions of our own, a language of our own - which is slightly different from kannada. But I am not an authority on the subject, nor have I read any book on comparative analysis of Karnataka brahmin traditions. And as most modern secular Hindus I find it more amusing to make fun of our traditions rather than celebrating them - may be because I do not understand it completely. I attended a marriage yesterday. So let us talk about few of rituals in this marriage ceremony. On the previous day of the marriage called Naandi - which means beginning of any good thing. The groom will wear a simple dress, and a wooden footwear (since we can't conjure up wooden paduka so easily, he will wear foot-wear made from dried skin of areca flower) and with a sack on his shoulder, will declare that  he will go to Kashi. Here he is saying, he wants to...