Anxiety: The Subscription Nobody Asked For

Confidence is a currency you can’t withdraw from an ATM.

You either carry it or you don’t.

And when confidence can be seen from across the room, we usually give it another name: swagger.

In its most brash form, swagger is understanding that it’s emotionally expensive to take yourself too seriously—and even more expensive to spend your life worrying about what everybody else thinks.

Walk into a room with ten people dressed to the nines, and two of them might dislike you before you even open your mouth. Maybe your confidence intimidates them. Maybe your clothes are too loud. Maybe you remind them of somebody they hate.

Now walk into that same room looking like a complete mess. Two different people might decide they don’t like you because you look like you don’t have your shit together.

Different outfit. Different haters. Same math.

That’s the part people miss.

You can accumulate haters through the simple act of minding your own damn business.

Once you understand that, something changes.

“What will people think?” starts losing its potency.

Because there is no version of you that everybody is going to approve of. Dress up, somebody talks. Dress down, somebody talks. Be ambitious, you’re arrogant. Be content, you lack ambition. Talk too much, you’re obnoxious. Stay quiet, now you’re weird.

So stop auditioning.

Swagger isn’t believing everybody in the room is going to like you.

Swagger is knowing some of them won’t—and walking into the room anyway.

Then Anxiety Shows Up

Now here’s the irritating part: you can know every word I just said is true and still have anxiety chew through that confidence like it missed breakfast.

Because knowing something and feeling something are two completely different departments.

You can know rejection isn’t fatal and still feel your stomach tighten when somebody tells you no.

You can know you’re qualified for the job and still stand outside the meeting wondering if everybody inside has somehow discovered you’re an idiot.

You can know somebody else’s opinion of you doesn’t determine your worth, then spend forty-five minutes replaying a seven-second conversation trying to figure out whether you sounded stupid.

That’s anxiety.

The subscription nobody asked for.

And whoever designed the business model deserves an award.

The customer retention is incredible. Nobody remembers subscribing, cancellation is unnecessarily complicated, and somehow the damn thing keeps renewing.

It even comes with notifications.

The mistake is believing confidence means those thoughts never happen.

They do.

Swagger doesn’t make you bulletproof. Confidence doesn’t magically delete insecurity, fear, embarrassment or uncertainty from your operating system.

Sometimes the most confident person in the room is fighting an argument inside their own head that nobody else can hear.

And that doesn’t make the confidence fake.

It makes the person human.

Stop Giving Anxiety a Promotion

The problem starts when anxiety moves from offering opinions to making decisions.

There’s a difference.

Anxiety can tell you the room isn’t for you. That you’re not ready. That everybody noticed the mistake you made three days ago and has probably formed a committee to discuss it.

Fine.

Anxiety is entitled to its opinion.

What it doesn’t automatically deserve is voting power.

Because if you wait until every insecurity disappears before you start living confidently, you might be waiting a very long time.

Confidence isn’t the absence of anxiety.

Swagger is what you do while anxiety is running its mouth.

Remember the room?

You walk in dressed to the nines. Two people might hate you.

The uncomfortable part is that anxiety will occasionally whisper that the other eight probably hate you too.

Let it whisper.

Walk in anyway.

Most people are too busy dealing with their own insecurities, bills, relationships, ambitions, mistakes and 2:17 a.m. thoughts to spend nearly as much time analyzing you as your anxiety would have you believe.

And the few who really are sitting around analyzing you?

Let them.

At least somebody’s thinking about you.

What Does Any of This Have to Do With Beauty?

You may be wondering: Nico, what does anxiety have to do with beauty? You write for Night Shift Magazine —a beauty publication.

Fair question.

The answer is simple.

Beauty isn’t only about the aesthetic. It’s also about how you feel when nobody is looking.

We spend an enormous amount of time working on the outside. Hair. Skin. Clothes. Makeup. The right body. The right picture. The right angle. The right version of ourselves to present to everybody else.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that. Looking good can make you feel good.

But sometimes we ask the outside to fix something it was never designed to repair.

Another outfit can’t silence insecurity. A perfect face can’t negotiate with anxiety. And no mirror can tell you how much you’re worth.

So nurture the inside too.

Because the more beautiful you feel without requiring somebody else to confirm it, the less pressure you may feel to perfect everything they can see.

Maybe you’ll still walk into that room dressed to the nines.

I probably would.

But hopefully you’re doing it because you like the way you look—not because you need the room to approve of it.

That’s beauty.

That’s confidence.

And anxiety can ride along if it wants.

It just can’t have the keys.