Happened to catch this quote last night while flipping channels...

narcissist, originally uploaded by Malingering.

It comes from the Travel Channel's "Beachgoers Exposed."

"If you have a presence about yourself that is strong and confident and you feel good about life and yourself, there's nothing more powerful than that."

Why are all my blogs coming from TV shows lately? lol

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This Week's Confidence Inspiration!

I sent this email to a friend of mine today. The two of us talk a LOT about being true to ourselves and living confidently. After I wrote it, I thought it would make a good blog entry!

I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but sometimes black women are the most confident women you ever run across. Whatever black moms are teaching their daughters, everyone else needs to be doing it!! I've been fortunate to draw some inspiration from a couple of them this week. One of them is a lady who works part-time at the place where I work out. Last night during our workouts, we got to talking about life as usual and how the hard things we've been through have made us who we are. She is 52 (but doesn't look it!) and just went through a breakup of a 3-year relationship she really thought was going somewhere. At first, she was really depressed...and then at some point, she got up and dusted herself off and decided no more tears were being wasted on that man. She went out dancing with her friends and didn't care about being single or trying to meet anyone; she just went and had a fantastic time and let loose on the dance floor. Because of the confidence and the empowered attitude she had, all the guys wanted to dance with her, and she ended up going out with one of them. She was telling me how she got to a place in her life where she just decided she was gonna do what she wanted to do and wasn't going to worry about what anyone thought. She has this real go-getter attitude. She's not arrogant; she's just confident, and she's really okay with who she is.

Then this morning I heard an interview on the radio with Monique about the movie "Precious." (I haven't seen it; have you? I want to but am a little afraid of the onslaught of emotion.) She had exactly the same attitude. They were asking her if she had ever been afraid of not succeeding in her career and things like that, and her answer was always if she didn't succeed, so what? She'd move on to something else and not let it keep her down. Her whole image of herself and what makes her special was so remarkable. I also remember seeing a quote in a magazine by the girl who plays Precious, Gabourey Sebide, where she said:

 “They try to paint the picture that I was this downtrodden, ugly girl who was unpopular in school and in life, and then I got this role and now I’m awesome...but the truth is that I’ve been awesome, and then I got this role.” She has also said, "One day I decided I was beautiful, and so I carried out my life as if I was a beautiful girl," and, "I think I'm amazing and awesome. But I think everyone is."

Yeah!!!

Then the Tyra episode with Isis (the first transgender Top Model - rock on!) came on again, so I watched part of it. She was homeless and living on the street, but when she got an opportunity to be in the background during a Top Model photo shoot, she just decided to WORK it, and she became almost an overnight star. She just had this outlook like, "This is me; you like it or you don't, but I like it fine."

Don't you want to live that way? How liberating!

What do you do to inspire more confidence in yourself?

Perception is reality?

I Tivo'ed a Dr. Phil episode called "Attention Seekers" recently and finally watched it last night. I was wowed by these people's levels of self-absorption and knew immediately that I had to post about it! There were a mom and dad who are stunt doubles and actually set their kids on fire in a stunt in order to gain notoriety and hopefully bag their own reality show. They just want the fame. (We don't believe in imposing a misguided need for perfection, vanity, or fame on kids, just for the record!)

Then there were two women interviewed on the show who want nothing more than to be famous and will do anything to get there. One of them has life-size posters of herself hanging all over her home that you see from the minute you walk in! She got one line on a TV drama and threw herself a party with 500 guests, told everyone she was in the whole episode, and led everyone to believe she was a major role, only for them to be very confused when her only line had come and gone. The other one reminded me of all those American Idol auditioners who truly think their singing voice is amazing when they actually can't even carry a tune (and she didn't sing well), and then they just get this annoying attitude when someone tells them they're not cut out for it and start insulting everyone. She maintains that she has something of substance to offer, that she doesn't just want to be famous for fame's sake, yet she never really states what that is...

Finally, they featured a girl who admits she's addicted to Facebook because of the attention she receives and updates her status to reflect every single little mundane thing she does throughout the day. She wakes up, she posts that she's awake. She dries her hair, she posts that she's drying her hair. She posts what she eats. She posts when she's getting in the shower. She's convinced that people actually care about all these things. Come on, who really wants to read all that stuff?! I'd be willing to bet that most of her 699 "friends" have her updates hidden.

You can read more about the episode here: http://drphil.com/shows/show/1398/

We think Dr. Phil has some pretty good and balanced advice in the "uncensored" video at the bottom of the show page...and since we definitely fall under the "fun" category, I think the closet narcissist is safe. ;)


Then this morning on the radio, I heard about this guy named Arthur Kade. Wow. This guy is unreal. He refers to himself in third person. He also refers to himself as "a rising celeb" or "The Brand." HAHA! He has his own scale of what he thinks makes a woman beautiful and says that anyone who scores below a 6 is "not worth listing or discussing. Not even friend or date worthy." The guy isn't even handsome, but he sure thinks he is! Perusing through his site, I can't help but wonder if the whole thing's just a ruse, just something to put his name in lights because it's extreme and shocking.

Oh, all these silly people...all we closet narcissists know that we actually DO have something to offer and that our amazingness is based on actual, rather than perceived, amazingness. ;) We also know that if we get shot down by someone who obviously can't recognize amazingness when they see it, we don't have a need to cry and beg for them to change their minds, nor do we need to get defensive and insulting to them. This is because we know we have something special without having to prove it or make excuses for it. I believe the people who can't take the heat don't really have the level of self-love they portray, or else they'd just suck it up and move on to the next challenge, knowing that there's really no such thing as failure, only life experience or simply being pushed in a new direction that suits you better.

So the question we pose to you is: what is that fine line between believing in yourself/believing you deserve to have recognition for something and just being an ass?

Also, what kinds of things do YOU do where you're already acting as if you're a celeb? They say you gotta fake it to make it sometimes, right?!

Stupid Cookie

It's 10:00am, and I've been up for about thirty minutes. I woke up feeling a bit sexy as I walked around the house in my black bra and lacy, grey, boy-cut panties (E-Bug's not home, so it's just VS and me). I love my body in the morning. Is it just me, or have you ever noticed how much flatter your tummy can look after a long night's sleep? Everything just seems a bit smoother too. It's actually quite encouraging! However, my feel-good morning was short lived. After going into the kitchen for a hug from my baby and my morning coffee, I spotted the cookies I baked last night. Large, moist, double chocolate chip cookies. Ugh. Why couldn't I have averted my eyes? Looked the other way? Had some damn self-control? Instead, I picked up the largest one I could find and chowed down. Immediately, that feel-good feeling was gone. It's as if all the blubber in my mid-region was released, and gone was the flat and the smooth. It was one cookie, for goodness' sake; it would be impossible to see its immediate effects on my body, right? Oh, well, what's done is done, and now I'm sitting next to VS in one of his old, oversized T-shirts, watching Big Cat Diaries. Boy, oh boy, do I feel hot. Umm, no, not really. Stupid cookie.


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Shoot Me, It's Snowing!

Yesterday was an unusual day here in the backwoods of Georgia. Yes, I live in the country and I love it. There are fewer people to bruise my ego, and the people that do live in my town tend to boost it at that. I say this in the nicest and most gracious way, of course. Anyways, back to the events of yesterday. In a rare occurrence, we were blanketed in a beautiful snowfall that began mid-afternoon and continued until late in the evening. As E-Bug (this is what I shall call my daughter) and VainShane (my love) were gaily running in and out of the house with constant weather updates, I had only one thing on my mind...photo op! My plan was to have VS take some long overdue pictures of me. I love taking pictures of my family and friends and always bring along my camera wherever I go. Unfortunately for me, I am rarely in any shots unless I take them of myself, which I've actually become quite skilled at doing, but I'll save that for another post.

So as the snow fell, I decided that I would begin the great task of beautifying myself rather than immediately join my family outside. While I really didn't want to waste this precious time, something inside of me said that it was necessary, if not mandatory. This is who I am...I felt obligated to make myself look good before stepping into my own backyard. So 45 minutes later, I had showered, shaved, moisturized, made up my face, and blew dry AND flat-ironed my hair. E-Bug and VS were continuing to keep me posted on the weather and were more than ready to have me join them in what had by now become our wintry paradise of a yard. Camera in tow, we ran through the field, and I began snapping pics of my beautiful family in the beautiful snow. I asked E-Bug to take some shots of VS and me and then asked VS to do the same for E-Bug and me. Finally, it was my turn to pose for the camera, and I did my best to smile and look adorably cute. I was anxious to get back inside so that I could upload my pics, and I was sure I'd gotten at least a couple of acceptable shots.

Sitting in front of my computer, I optimistically looked at the screen as the photos began loading. There was E-Bug, smiling sweetly in her winter hat, snowflakes falling around her and looking lovely. Several shots of VainShane, snowballs in hand (ha ha, no pun intended), looking boyishly charming and sexy. And then there was me. Blurry me. Snowflakes fogging the lens me. In the middle of talking me. Making weird faces me. Crazy eyes me. Blinking me. Where was cute and adorable me? Sexy snow bunny me? The beautiful me I had felt on the inside when VS was snapping away? I was nowhere to be found; however, this awkward, clumsy, downright funny-looking girl was all over my computer. Ugh. I knew what the problem was, and it wasn't me...how could it be, after all? It was him; his knowing face stared at me from across the screen.

VainShane. He is handsome, smart, and a wonderful husband, but give him a camera and he is clueless. Don't take me wrong; I'm sure he could take a perfectly acceptable picture of my daughter or anyone else for that matter. But when it comes to photographing me, he puts forth no effort. Is it too much to ask him to think about the composition and how he could make me look more flattering? Couldn't he just ask himself, "Is this angle going to truly capture my beautiful wife, or will it make her look like a simple-minded, plump, aging housewife?" Am I being unreasonable? Where is Jenarcissist when I need her? She could have made me look to appear as cute on the outside as I did on the inside. She understands. Even E-Bug could have been more successful, after all, I've been teaching her how to take flattering pictures of Mommy since she could hold a camera. So in the end, I have been left with no proof of my cuteness in the snow. What's a girl to do? I'd suggest marrying a photographer...or in my case, train your own! :)

the narcissists' diary

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