Don't be afraid to share the real you

Let the strangers can think what they like of me. They could read my mind for all I care. Scorn me, disapprove of me, misunderstand me, so what? So long as they don't come at me with pitchforks or the force of the law, it really doesn't affect my life. But once I connect with people they gain the power to hurt me, as I them. Their rejection now means something to me. In fact it means everything. And when I try to write I find myself paralysed by fear.

Every word I write creates an impression. For good or for bad, what were once merely fleeting insecurities are now crystallized into words. Words that tell who I am. Words that can be interpreted and misinterpreted. Constructed and destructed. Words that intend to help, but might instead cause harm. I'm scared of everyone, but no-one more than myself.

Who am I? What am I? What do you think I am? So many questions behind every word. So many uncertainties. I fear setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy. Describe myself in negative terms and people will start to see me in that way, whether justified or not. In a place where they have only my own words to go by, I have none but myself to blame. But dare to craft a more positive impression and it gives me terrifyingly further to fall, more chance for people to reject me when they find out the “truth”. A truth that I myself have never discovered, nor even defined, yet remains a vague uncertain and all embracing terror. A fear that I am simply worthless... Or even worse.

I started deleting answers the other day. Hundreds of them. It had nothing to do with their content, I wasn't even reading them at that point. It was a frenzied annihilation. I just wanted to disappear into the mist, taking every trace of myself along with it. And yet, whenever I am convinced the biggest favour I could do for humanity is to erase myself from it entirely, another part of my consciousness comes along and tells me that not sharing myself is far worse. That my experiences can help, and that remaining silent is the selfish thing to do… irresponsible even.

I don't know. How can I contribute anything when I have no idea who I am? Will I find myself here? Whatever will I find? What will anyone find? I'm not just afraid, I'm petrified. But fear is a poor master. And I won't let it win. Every meaningful connection in my life has been made by pushing myself to share even when I felt uncomfortable. Even when my inner voice was screaming that I had nothing to offer but pain and disappointment. I refuse to listen. And here I am. Yes, I am selective about what I share. It depends on a lot of factors. Fear is not the reason why I don’t share everything about me. It’s mainly because I don’t want strangers dissecting my life and judging me.

If you look at the amount of personal information I share on here, it may seem like I’m putting it all out there. But whatever you see is what I explicitly allow you to see. There is a lot more to me and my life than what I put here on social media. This is the same attitude I have across all my social media platforms. Be it Facebook or Instagram or WhatsApp or Twitter or wherever. It is unsettling to think about how much people crave to know about others’ lives and their private matters. I have had friends getting annoyed with me because I don’t advertise my private life on Facebook. They were not able to gauge my ‘happiness level’ and were getting pissed. I told them that I take the word ‘private’ in ‘Private Life’ very seriously. They now think I don’t have one. All I do is smirk :

However, ever since I started having social media actively, I always felt okay sharing personal details because I was happy and I wasn't aware of internet hackers, scamsters, identity thieves or anything like that. But now I'm scared to share a lot about myself because I don't remember much of the stuff that happened in the past and I don't know. it could of just cleared from my memory or it's still at the back my mind. the reason why I’m scared is because I worry about other people misusing the stuff I have shared with them about my past.

I am afraid it might be used against me as evidence to show proof that I talk a lot of crap and being hated and disliked because of it (when in fact, there's probably lots of other people who have this kind of problem too). and the reason why I’m not is because I want to feel like I’m popular and kind of not scared because I do tend to open up after a while of being shy and yeah it's great. I don't have a lot of money, I am not financially independent. I am good at social skills, I am good with connecting people, but my network is still less.

I won't be able to trust anybody as the only individual I trust is me, myself and I. If loose myself, I just can't achieve my goals for this life. Loosing myself can lead to my failure, I am not saying failure is bad. The thing is I don't care about failure I learn from them but the one who will take over after looaing myself he would care about failure. I just hate comfort zone sometimes. That will restrict my growth too. Insufficient Knowledge of the topic : When you are about to put forward your opinion, you go deep into self analysis.

Am I sure about this thing? What if I am wrong? What if others know it better than me? What if other people make fun of me? To get away from these thoughts, read a lot of books. If you have good knowledge about something, people would want to hear from you and that will give you a strong boost of confidence. Poor linguistic skills : If you are not able to convey your thoughts via the right words, every piece of knowledge is worthless. One should try to improve it by reading books, watching news channels and learning a new word everyday. It is a slow process but that how it works.

Poor oratory skills : Public speaking is an art. Not everyone can do it. To improve your oratory skills, talk to yourself in the mirror(I do it every day). You will odd at first but after a while it becomes fun and you feel much more confident about yourself. Challenge yourself : You should challenge yourself to go and talk with strangers and groups of strangers. Talk to people in the metro, buses and in all other modes of public transport. Talk about common topics like Politics and religion and soon you’ll start feeling comfortable in talking to people and it’ll make you believe that not everyone around you is judging you. People are nice :)

Stay away from your phone : Instead of playing games on your mobile phone for the entire day, chatting with girls on tinder and watching memes all day, go out and explore the world. Interacting with people gives you confidence while all other things you do are just a wastage of time. I now know I shouldn't write much about this topic here. It needs a lot of courage to share your feelings. Every person has not that ability to share what are they feeling. What i have observed is a person who shares his or her feelings to other is a pure heart person they are not calculated they say what they feel. But when they see around and find everyone is silent they assume that something is wrong with them. And they start blaming themselves that why I shared this. Cheers!