Hi, this is me, your insecurity. Let’s be friends!
That's how this book began. The title immediately caught my attention right away when I saw it on the bookshelf at my local library. So I borrowed it. This book has about five chapters that explore various kinds of insecurities, ranging from physical appearances, careers, feeling left out, and other such issues.
In the first 70 pages or so, the author writes about “good looks aren’t everything”. I get why it has to start with that theme, because here where I come from, conversations around beauty privilege are always related to many people, especially the younger generation.
I like how the author states something like, “Your insecurity assumes a lot of things and poisoning your mind”, and gives examples in several different contexts. Some pages of this book are also filled with pretty short sentences that are easy to read. This is just my opinion, but the author is probably targeting Gen Z as the common audience, as this is also the first book in his Self-Healing series.
But for me, this book doesn’t explore the theme of insecurity as much as I expected. It feels somehow all over the place because the author tries to cover so many things but doesn’t provide in-depth further explanation. And I also find the contents feel inconsistent sometimes.
For example, when discussing about physical appearances aren’t everything, the author gives examples of other meaningful things we can do, like being kind or being intellectual because “that’s also beautiful in some ways”. But then in the next chapter, he writes, “okay, let’s be realistic..” which somehow makes the previous conversation feel quite useless.
Of course he backs it up with “the door doesn’t close for someone who isn’t good-looking”, but I find that a bit off-putting. And as I mentioned earlier, because the book tries to cover so many things, for me personally, some sections feel like a short conversation that is easy to forget.
One example is when the author talks about careers, he somehow only discusses jobs that are related to digital and social media, such as content writers, video editors, graphic designers, etc. I know it’s based on the author’s experience, which is why it feels somehow “limited” to me because not everyone wants a career in social media so the conversation is too specific yet still shallow at the same time.
In my opinion, the writing style of this book feels like the author is trying to “talk” to the reader, if you know what I mean. So I feel like it’s more suitable as a script for videos or podcasts, rather than being in a book form. But maybe for some people, that’s a plus; a writing style that feels like “talking to a friend”. So once again, it depends on preference.
One of the few things I appreciate about this book (but for some, it might be a minus) is that the author also tries to steer the conversation into the religion perspective, which is Islam. As a Muslim, I appreciate it a lot because this book gives me some perspective about insecurity from my religion’s point of view, but I don’t know if readers with different beliefs could appreciate it or not, as the synopsis doesn’t mention that the book will also cover some religious perspectives.
Overall this is a light read to pass the time, because even though I didn’t love the book, I feel like spending time reading it was better than just mindlessly scrolling through social media. I’ve been so bad with my screen time and whenever I borrowed books from the library, I almost always ended up not finishing them. So the fact that I finished this book even though I know I wouldn’t love it, feels like a proof to myself that I can reclaim my attention, if that make sense lol
Thanks for reading as always. May I know your mindset to overcoming your own insecurities, hivers? Let’s keep the conversation going hehe
