Nothing’s impossible in this world, except maybe one thing: perfection. We all get a bad case of insecurity every now and then—from failing a test to receiving a backhanded compliment (because let’s face it, the world will never run out of bullies). For some people, these bad days go on to become bad months, and then bad years.
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Don’t worry, friend. It happens to the best of us. Just ask our previous cover girls Nadine Lustre, Kathryn Bernardo, and Gabbi Garcia. These women have legions of young people looking up to them, but even they get bogged down by doubt. What will people think of them? Can they really do this? What if their bashers are right? The important thing is, they push past those bad voices.
When it comes to confidence, the three of them have one thing in common: their inner cheerleader. They have the ability to brush aside external voices and focus on living life according to their own rules.
We know, it’s easier said than done. Good thing though, the girls shared some tips on owning your self-worth with us at the last Ponds’ Women Speak. The power panel talked about finding that unshakable confidence that we all have within us. Here are our favorite takeaways from the talk:
Ylona Garcia
Believe in your personal decisions.
Ylona kept it a hundred percent real with us. “As a teen, we go through stages in life. Especially when you’re a teen, you’re overwhelmed with these emotions and you don’t know what you can do with it. I’m still struggling with it,” she confesses. We’ve all been there, Ylona. But that’s what this gathering’s for. What helps her get through the tumult of adolescence is holding on to her decisions. “You just gotta make sure that whatever decisions you make, you’re ready to spend the rest of your life accepting and living with [it],” she says. “Just make sure that if you choose it, it’s what speaks to you.”
Gabbi Garcia
Keep in mind the things you can and cannot control.
You heard it here first: Gabbi is a regular person like all of us. “I’m an overthinker,” Gabbi says. We’ve all gone down that rabbit hole of self-doubt. What helps her stay afloat amid the barrage of troubling thoughts is to remind herself that she’s simply human. No one can carry the weight of the entire world, but sometimes we forget that. Lucky for us, Gabbi’s here to remind us to cut ourselves some slack.
Kathryn Bernardo
Always choose to be strong.
Sometimes, whenever you think you’re on the verge of giving up, all it takes is just a little more willpower to carry you up the hill. Kathryn can attest to that. During her taping for “Hello, Love, Goodbye,” she was on the verge of quitting due to the challenges of internalizing her character—the isolated, overworked Joy Fabregas. What made her push through is the thought that she might regret it afterwards. Obviously, it paid off: “Hello, Love, Goodbye” is now the highest-grossing Filipino film.
Nadine Lustre
Don’t doubt yourself before you do something.
In our book, Nadine Lustre is the personification of confidence. Even as a veteran actress, singer, dancer, and all-around cool person, she still gets the jitters before she does what she does best—perform. “What if I make a mistake? What if I don’t do this right?” is what goes through her head, she says, and that’s a surefire way to fail. That’s when she learned that she needed to be her own hype woman. Now, she always fires herself up with words of affirmation: “You can do it. You can do this, you got this. Don’t worry.” If president Nadine wants me to believe in myself, then I will.
Heart Evangelista
Don’t fear failure and change.
Heart wants us to know that failures aren’t the end of the road. “I watched my life get dismantled by a lot of people. I’ve lost, at a point, almost everything. But when you get to that point, it’s the only time you’ll realise that it’s needed, that you actually needed to lose everything to put things, piece by piece, together,” she told us, like the true inspiration she is. If you’ve weathered one storm, you can get through any, right?
And so these power women have spoken: It’s self-affirmation szn in this house. Why don’t we all take a cue from Gabbi, Kathryn, and Nadine, and give ourselves a little more credit? If we face our hesitations and #SeeWhatHappens, we can build a community that’s stronger, and most importantly, more empowered. You can count us in for that.
Art by Cathy Dizon
Photography by Bea Tan