Your Story is a series by WonderfulWomen where you will read inspiring Guest Posts from women around the world. Here they share their experiences, stories and things that matter most to all women.
Today’s Guest Post is by Edulany Cardosco. She hails from São Tomé, Africa. Edulany is an empowerment coach who runs a lifestyle blog awomansroutine.com and a flight attendant (She loves to travel, one of her dreams since a little kid). Her obsession is to see women succeed in life and here she is today to tell us all some lessons she learnt from living with a low self-esteem. Read this post to learn something we all women Must learn!
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7 lessons I’ve Learnt from Living with a Low Self-Esteem
As a kid, I was really innocent and really conscious at the same time about the world and the possession and beauty of other women. I was that kind of children that don’t care about what other girls of my age had or what they hadn’t and all I thought about was that I will have all I want, I will be successful, and I will give my mum the queen life she deserves.
I was always known as a dreamer and I liked to be different from everyone else, I liked to help everyone, and I enjoyed seeing other people happy, but I didn’t like to show my weakness, my fragility and ask for help.
When I was around my 19, 20 years after having a broken relationship and dealing with the difficulty of living in a country I wasn’t born in and peoples prejudice from being a dreamer, from being black, from not accepting that men are better than women and trying to convince myself that I could change those people’s thoughts I broke.
I start seeing a psychiatrist because I started thinking that I was crazy, I start getting into depression and almost got myself interned in a psychiatric hospital because I had symptoms of deep depression.
I was using clothes that were bigger than me just to not be seen as the girl that’s trying to show her body, I started getting angry when someone looked at me and say that I was beautiful, I thought they’re trying to make fun of me, how could this be possible?
I wouldn’t accept people to think I was beautiful because I didn’t think I was. I wouldn’t accept people telling me I was good at doing something because I didn’t think I was that good.
I thought I was so ugly, I thought everything I did, every skill I master was really easy that everyone could do it, so if everyone could do, what’s the point of they told me I was good at it? They’re clearly making fun of me, isn’t it right?
No, it isn’t and I’m so glad I’ve been through this phase because when I realised that all of it was in my mind and I had control over my life, that my life is my responsibility and that I could do what I wanted, I changed completely.
Today I help women to love themselves, to grow their self-confidence to get what they want, from a promotion in their current job to a dream that they keep putting aside because they think they can’t do it or they aren’t good enough for it. I learnt how to do it, I grew my self-confidence and if I could do it and change my life than you can do it too.
From all this roller coaster I’ve been through with my self-esteem, this is the 7 lessons I learnt:
1- You’re your biggest friend and your biggest enemy
The way you look at yourself will define which one you’re in the moment. You can be your biggest fan and push yourself forward or you can become your biggest enemy and put yourself down.
2- No matter how hard you try to hide from the world your star will always shine.
You’re unique and that’s your power and no matter what you do to cover that you’ll still be unique and nothing can change that.
3- Accept your skills and quality will always raise your vibration.
Every time someone tells you that you’re good at something just say thanks and really accept it. Every time you feel yourself going down and doubting your greatness, grab a pen and paper and write at least 5 of your qualities and things that you’re really good at. No matter what it’s, write it down and you will see how good it feels…you can thank me later baby.
4- You are never in the wrong path.
In the moments sometimes, we can feel like we are on the wrong path and that we made the wrong decisions and sometimes it’s true, we aren’t always right in our life, we do make some bad decision and that’s ok because it all leads us to exactly where we need, it’s all part of a process, it’s our journey.
5- Use every mistake as a lesson and always seek for improvement.
When you take a wrong decision or you think you made a mistake, please don’t get stuck into it, move forward. Recognised that you made, and you can’t do anything to change it, learn from it and keep going. Life is a process, you need to make mistakes to know what’s the right way to do it and making one, ten, thousands of mistakes is nothing more than lessons and improvement. Giving up is never an option.
Maya Angelou once said:
“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated“
6- Either you think you’re good or bad, you’re right.
You’re more powerful than you think, either if you want to change the world or destroy it you can do it, if you want to believe in a fairy tale or in ghost you can totally do it is all up to you which way you want to go, which direction you want to take. No matter what you choose, it’s all your responsibility baby.
7- Self-confidence is the best outfit you can wear.
I mean you don’t need to go out naked and just be confident, what I mean is if you put your best outfit and are not confident about yourself then you’re naked. So, be confident about yourself and about who you are no matter where you are at, makes all the difference.
Putting yourself down does nothing more than refusing your uniqueness, your power. I have a pretty funny accent even when I speak my mother language, which is Portuguese, and people used to use this to hurt me and for being in a such a low self-esteem I allowed it for so long now that I’m really confident about myself, that I accepted this as a part of my uniqueness, guess what?!…everyone that met me say “OMG, I love your accent, don’t you ever lose it”. Well, once you start loving yourself, embracing your qualities and accept your uniqueness everyone will do it because that’s what you’re putting into the universe and they say “What you give to the universe is what you receive”.
I hope this helps you to get confident about yourself and help you to embrace your uniqueness because this is your power, this is you and this is what makes you different from everyone else in this entire universe.
“I’m not a one in a million kind of girl, I am a once in a lifetime kind of woman” (Unknown), tells yourself this mantra every single morning when you wake up, I’m very serious about this.
So beautiful soul, Please do me a favor…love yourself and live a beautiful life. I believe in you, I know that you can be the confident badass you want to be and change the entire world. Well, why not?
I’m offering 8 weeks coaching program for women who want to grow her self-confidence, I still have 2 spots left, so If you want to join me you can book your free consultation call, will be my pleasure to help you become the confident woman you want to be.
WonderfulWomen Recommends: You can go ahead and get help from a therapist or psychologist according to your need.)
Connect with Edulany
Join Her Facebook Group THE EMPOWERMENT CLUB
Create your Ideal Life Workbook HERE
This post is very helpful and effective. The writing style was amazing. I am waiting for your new Post and please give me update when you publish new one .Thanks for your article.