Day 12: what are 3 things you would like to change about yourself.

I wish that I could be more confident in myself so that I could stop doubting everything I do. This occurs no matter what I am doing, whether I am serving a customer at work or leaving the house to take my dog for a walk. For example, after I serve a customer at the bank, I start doubting myself even if I have been given absolutely no reason to do so. Suddenly I begin to panic that I may not have entered the correct value into the computer or that I could have given out the wrong amount of money and I will not be satisfied that I didnt make any mistakes until the end of the night when my computer terminal balances and I have no funds outstanding. It is also common for me to feel the need to go back and check that all my powerpoints are turned off and that the door to my wood fire is definetely closed numerous times whenever I leave the house. Of course, everytime I go back I always find that everything is just as it should be but as soon as I think of any possibility of what I may have done wrong, I instantly start convincing myself that it is true.

I wish that I could stop worrying about food, calories, exercise and weight. I really do wish that I could just go back to the time in my life when I still didnt know what a calorie was. I wish I could still eat a meal without thinking about how many calories it contains as well as how eating that meal will effect my weight. If someone gave me the option of wiping my memory from the last 5 years, I would definetely do it, just so I could rid myself of the knowledge I have developed about calories and food. Afterall, It was only about 4 or 5 years ago that I never worried about what I ate at all.

I distinctly remember something a boy said as we were making our lunches one day at the boarding house. As I was making myself a wrap, the boy said to me, 'you are like the only girl I know who doesnt care about what you eat.' I looked around the room and realised that most of the girls were filling their wraps with healthy fresh salads however I didnt feel like salad. I felt like chicken, cheese and BBQ sauce, so that is exactly what I had. He wasnt being awful or anything, he was just pointing out the fact that I never thought about what I ate, and he was completely right. If I felt like something, I ate it no matter how healthy or unhealthy it was. I wish so much that I could go back to having this relationship with food again.

I wish I didn't have such high expectations of myself all the time. If I wasn't as much of a perfectionist my life could have been very different. I would have better self confidence and better self esteem as I wouldn't have spent my whole life feeling like a failure in everything I did. I would have been able to study and still have a balanced and healthy life as I wouldnt have felt the need to study every minute of everyday to try and get perfect marks. I probably would have never become so unhappy with how I looked and therefore would not have felt the need to start trying to lose weight.

Even now, expecting so much of myself all the time still effects my life Significantly. I find myself being too frightened to try new things that I dont think I will be able to do perfectly, as I know I will only end up feeling like a failure. I now realise that nobody is perfect and that I shouldnt expect as much of myself. It is a part of my personality however and I dont think I can really change this completely. I can however try to use it as a poitive thing instead of a distructive personality trait.