If I met Susan today, fifty-four years after she crushed me, I wonder whether she would even remember me. I doubt it, but I remember her. I would ask her why she asked me to share a bunk bed with her on a school trip, only to dump me at the last minute for another girl. Did she know what that did to my confidence and self-esteem? Did she care? Susan was in my class at school, and she was the kind of girl I wanted to be. Popular, outgoing, always had an entourage of girls around her. Plus, she had a pony. The sort of girl that teenage adventure stories are written about. I wanted to be part of Susan’s life. I wanted a pony. Maybe I even wanted to be Susan. I nearly made it into her inner circle, which I called ‘the cool gang.’ When Susan asked me if I wanted the bottom bunk under hers on the school trip, I was in my element. At the last minute, she told me she had chosen someone else. She laughed. Can you imagine how crushing that was for a teenage girl with low self-esteem? I didn’t enjoy the trip at all after that. Looking back, the thing I find most interesting is that I can’t recall any of the other girls I thought were part of the ‘cool gang’. I can only remember Susan. I had my own friends. Marie, Linda, Christine, and Alison. They were lovely, but they didn’t seem to be enough. Which makes me feel a little guilty. Why did I need more than them? I have no idea what it was about, Susan. Yes, she was outgoing and clever. I think her parents might have been quite wealthy, and of course there was the pony. But what Susan really had, in my eyes, was self-confidence. I wanted to hold a conversation like she did, put my hand up in class like she did, and have my parents love me enough to buy me a pony. To be honest, they probably couldn’t afford one, and we didn’t have anywhere to keep it. I would have been too scared to ride it anyway. It wasn’t the pony. It wasn’t even Susan. It was about being accepted. Why did it matter? I was a sensitive child, with parents who found it hard to show love. They had their own troubles, which I didn’t understand at the time. Like many people, I grew up believing I wasn’t good enough. Having a friend like Susan would, in my mind, prove I was accepted. Then I would be good enough. Then I would be confident. That belief held me hostage for years. I had a pattern of bad relationships; I stayed in a job where I wasn’t happy for too long. I suffered from social anxiety and drank too much. Then one day I made a decision. My life would change. I decided to build my confidence. Where did the strength come from after years of not feeling good enough? The answer is in the word ‘confidence’ itself. What is confidence? The word confidence means to trust fully. When you are about to do something unfamiliar, it is natural to feel fear. To enter a situation with no guarantee of success, you need to trust yourself. You need to believe you can do this. I trusted that I could change my life. After my divorce, I began reading self-help books on confidence. I read about others who had transformed their lives. I told myself that if they could change, maybe I could too. Maybe I didn’t need people like Susan to accept me. Maybe I needed to accept myself. That was a huge realisation. I don’t need anyone to accept me. I can accept myself. I started to trust myself. Trust alone is not enough You can read every book there is about confidence. You can understand why you behave as you do. You can believe that change is possible. And still do nothing. Because eventually you have to act. That’s when fear often shows up disguised as resistance, perfectionism or procrastination. You decide you need one more book, one more week of research. Or you feel ill and will have to put it off for now. You think you will start next week. You won’t. Fear is holding you hostage. You can spend years preparing before you feel confident enough to begin. I had confidence backwards for a long time. I thought I needed to become confident enough to start. What I understand now is that taking action grew my confidence. I needed enough trust in myself to take one small step without knowing exactly where it would lead. After that, to keep taking those small steps forward. Each action gave my nervous system a little more evidence. If I could achieve one thing, then I could achieve something else. Practice brought competence. Competence gave me more evidence that I could trust myself. My confidence grew because I started living differently. Learning to walk We had confidence before we learned to believe we didn’t. When we first tried to walk, we fell back down. We failed. We didn’t give up. We knew that walking was important. So, even though we might have cried, we got up and tried again. We never gave up. The courage to try again and the trust that we would succeed got us walking. Something that once seemed impossible became something we did without thinking. Somewhere along the way, many of us stopped approaching life that way. We started believing we needed to know we would succeed before we tried. We began looking outside ourselves for reassurance that we were capable, worthy or good enough. I learned that I didn’t need to feel confident; my confidence grew from deciding I was enough, then taking small actions to prove it to myself, not to anyone else. * Smiling at people and making eye contact. * Speaking up instead of staying quiet. * Walking into rooms with my head held high. * Being comfortable having conversations, even the hard ones. * Writing down my thoughts and letting other people read them. That’s how I became the confident woman I am today. I am good enough. Flawed but awesome too. That is me. We don’t need a Susan If I could go back in time. I would love to speak to Susan, because I don’t think she was as confident as I thought. I would tell her that she didn’t need to impress her supposedly cool gang (but probably not) by hurting a young girl’s feelings. I would tell her something that I hope she figured out for herself later: Nobody else gets to decide whether you are enough. And I never needed a pony either. Thirty years ago, I started a journey of healing and finding my confidence. I realise now that what I was really looking for was me.One by one I removed limiting beliefs and uncovered the hidden parts of myself. I have also helped others, men and women of all ages to do the same. I am proud of my work, and I love sharing my story and experiences here on Substack. Thank you for being here with me.Much loveSue xx This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit suereid.substack.com/subscribe
