On “bliss” & “confidence”

Being where you are is bliss. Thinking about where you should be is suffering.

I spend a lot of time thinking about where I should be, who I should be, how I should be… it’s exhausting. If bliss is the opposite of that and just being, then I haven’t had bliss in a longgggg time.

One thing I haven’t been able to truly crack as an “adult” yet is being 100% OK with who I am. It’s funny because this has majorly ebbed and flowed in my life. From ages 17 - 23 I had the most badass, confident, fuck-what-everyone-else-thinks (almost to a fault). This is the girl who was writing college essays about Miley Cyrus, carrying a few more pounds than look right on my frame but being totally oblivious to it on a night out, and happy with or without men.

(NOTE: I definitely had the off day when I thought “why do I look like this”, or “when will I meet ‘the one’”, or “what am I actually working towards and who are my friends and omg I can’t live in freakin’ Boston for the rest of my life…”)

The year 2021 was when it all really changed for me. I went from being a baby-adult (really only optimizing for myself, my wants/needs/whims) to having to learn how to be in a real relationship with someone else. This made me mature a lot because as a youngest child, a lot of things are given and not learned. I thought that being able to pay rent, cook for myself, get myself to work on time every day, and having a thriving social life meant that I was a “grown up.” What being a grown up actually means is not facing your biggest fears, not ignoring your problems but rather facing them head on, and also learning that life isn’t getting what you want all the time. The best things in life require a little bit of work, and hopefully a special someone that makes all that inner work a bit more worth it.

Shanaz from age 23 - 26 has been less confident, “ra-ra-go-go-go” than her younger self. I find myself questioning the way I am, the way I look, the friends I’ve made, the decisions I’ve made, and overall just double guessing some big life things. Most times it’s because I feel like the life I’ve created for myself in Berlin is too good to be true and that it can be yanked away from me at any given moment. That I’ll lose my job and have to go back to America; that friends I’ve invested a lot of time and energy into will fade away with new marriages, babies, and international moves; that everything is hanging in delicate balance in my relationship and one of us could just get up and leave one night. This is definitely my anxiety taking control of my brain, but sometimes I miss the girl who would smile in the mirror and feel on top of the world.

Looking back through my notes, I found one from the summer I graduated college that says:

“The sooner you accept that there are people prettier and smarter than you, the happier you’ll be. Give yourself goals to work towards but don’t discount yourself in the process. Everyone is the best at something and there’s no point in dwelling on what ifs. Think about the things you did and what you’re going to do.”

21-year old, sleep deprived (and probably hungover) Shanzi definitely knew what 👏was 👏up👏. I laughed reading this and genuinely thought to myself “who wrote that?! Is this a quote from somewhere?!” only to promptly google it and realize that no, it was a Shanaz Mahmood original. I’m proud of myself for at some point having come to this realization…and I’m wondering what I have to go through to get back to that good space.

Part of me thinks that prior to 2021, I was living in a bubble. I was a small town girl from the East Coast who lived in a world of old-money academia, consulting bros, high school sweethearts, Vineyard Vines & LL Bean, Nantucket, and Sunday football. It wasn’t hard to feel superior and have false confidence just by thinking a little out of the box and having more than small-town aspirations. (Seems silly when seemingly everyone in Europe leaves their small town to try a big city at some point, but this definitely didn’t feel like the norm in sleepy Milton). When I met Alex, my little bubble was shattered. Now it wasn’t me versus the 30 other women I went to high school with, but me against a whole onslaught of international bombshells (or so it felt). I know there’s no such thing as me vs. anyone, and that everyday should be me against yesterday’s me, but this is something I constantly struggle with in addition to:

• Valuing literally everyone else above myself (I will literally find something (anything) that someone is better at than me (ability, looks, intelligence, personality, etc.) and ruminate on it for hours)

• Being in constant comparison and competition with others

• Second guessing my abilities and uniqueness

Like I said, it’s exhausting being me.

So now at 26 (almost 27) years old, I’m trying to find that special something that I had while writing that lil’ note in my phone. Some things I’m doing to try to get back to it:

• Doing things I liked doing when I was a kid - Baby Shanz (from age 7-14 ish) was a big fan of drawing, playing dress up, going for solo long walks (this is kinda weird), maxing out the number of books I could borrow from the library, and writing. Luckily, these are all things I can still do!

• Doing things even though people think they’re a “waste of time” - Am I going to do a Power Pilates Teacher training course even though I might never become a Pilates instructor? HYFR (do we say that still?). I used to wait to do things until I had the validation that those activities were “worth it” - whether academically, hobby-wise, or monetarily. This year, we’re going to just go for things.

• Doing things even though they have no monetary value (or even cost me a pretty penny) - The frugal woman in me is constantly thinking about the price of things, which is why I haven’t done a lot of the random things I’ve wanted to do like take a pottery class or finally take swimming lessons. But I’ll be glad I finally tried the damn thing instead of worrying about money like I’m a single mother of two.

• Quitting my all or nothing mentality - sometimes it’s OK to just go for a run and not be training for something. It’s OK to start a blog again and not post on it 3x a week. I feel like my obsessive goal-oriented personality sucks the fun out of things sometimes and I need to learn to just do things because they’re fun and not because I need to fill out the extracurricular portion of my CV.

In short, I want to pay special attention to the things that make me happy and do more of those things unapologetically. Seems like I’ve got quite a bit to work on in the coming year, but re-gaining the inner confidence (and dare I say it - “self-love” 🤢) that I lost somewhere along the way will be 100% worth the effort. Maybe I’ll even find “bliss.”