Inner Strength: The Story of What Lives Inside Us

By Gaby

There was a time when I didn’t trust myself. I moved through life like a leaf in the current; carried, directed, and shaped by everything around me, but never by my own will. But this didn’t start later in life. It began much earlier.

As a child, I had almost no self-confidence, no real sense of self-worth, so I always believed others knew better. I remember watching others and thinking they were somehow more than me; more interesting, more important, more right. And I felt like I was less. Inferior to others. Unsure of who I was or what I should be. This followed me into my teenage years. I couldn’t even trust my own preferences or feelings. If someone asked me, “Do you like this band?” I would say yes, just because they liked it, even if I had never really listened to their music. Not because I truly felt it, but because I believed their opinion mattered more than mine. They seemed stronger, more certain, more capable. So I adapted. I followed. I copied. I tried to become what I thought I was supposed to be.

If something was considered “cool,” I did it. If someone acted a certain way, I tried to act the same. If a certain style of clothing was popular, I wanted to wear it, not because I loved it, but because others did. I would notice what people around me were buying, how they were dressing, how they were speaking and I tried to mirror it. The same clothes, the same trends, the same opinions. It felt safer to blend in than to stand out. I didn’t question it, I just followed. I thought the answers were always outside of me. I absolutely had no wisdom. And slowly, without realizing it, I drifted further away from myself. I thought I was fitting in, but in reality, I was slowly losing my own voice.

When I started my 9 to 5 corporate job, I started to realize even more that I am losing myself. My days became structured around a fixed routine that looked productive from the outside, but internally I felt increasingly disconnected from it. I woke up, commuted, worked, went home and repeated the same cycle again and again. It was a life that many people live, and in that sense, it felt normal, expected. But over time I started to feel less like an individual and more like a tiny part of a much larger system. My personal interests, impulses and creativity began to fade into the background, replaced by deadlines, meetings and responsibilities that were not always aligned with who I was or what I truly valued. I adapted so well to the structure that I did not immediately realize what I was losing. I lost my inner strength, individuality and began to blend into routines, expectations and roles that were defined FOR me rather than chosen BY me. It felt as if my identity had been compressed into a professional function; efficient, reliable and predictable. I had to live up to others’ expectations. And in that process, I slowly drifted away from the parts of myself that felt alive, curious and free. Looking out of the window of my office, I would often daydream about escaping and being somewhere else; somewhere far away; imagining a life where I could finally feel free, because staying in my reality felt too heavy, too limiting, and too far from who I wanted to be.

So slowly, over the years I became a reflection of others rather than a person rooted in my own truth. Inside, there was confusion. A quiet feeling that something wasn’t quite right; but I didn’t know how to name it, and I certainly didn’t know how to change it. So, when life became difficult, I had nothing to hold onto. No inner voice to guide me. No sense of direction. No belief that I could find my own way. I felt lost, not just in the world, but within myself. Instead of being grounded in my own being,  I was trying to maneuver a self through the world that was created for the approval of others.  The hardships I faced were not abstract. They were real, personal, and often painful. There were moments when I was mistreated, when I was lied to, betrayed or when I was judged without being understood. There were times I felt rejected, even pushed out, as if I didn’t belong. Each of these experiences left something behind: confusion, hurt, and a deep questioning of my own worth. For a long time, I let those moments define me. I believed what others showed me: that I was not enough, not strong enough, not worthy enough.

But over time, something began to shift, life doesn’t let you stay lost forever. The hardships I once feared became the very moments that began to change me. They didn’t come gently; they forced me to stop, to face myself, to sit with the discomfort I had avoided for so long. And in that space, something shifted.

For the first time, I started to reflect. Not just on what others were doing, but on what I felt. What I wanted. What I believed. It was unfamiliar, even uncomfortable at first. But it was real. I began to understand that strength isn’t something you borrow from others. It’s something you build; quietly, slowly, from within. It isn’t something to be achieved but a trust that returning to your true self is the best path. That you don’t need to fit into the judgements and conceptions of others, you are intrinsically worthy of peace and joy . The challenges that once made me feel weak started to teach me something different. They showed me that I didn’t need to be submissive to life or to others. I could stand in it. I could move through it. I could find my own way. That’s where inner strength began. Not as something loud or obvious, but as a quiet decision: to trust myself a little more each day.

Today, hardships don’t break me in the same way. They still challenge me, but they also guide me. They give me an opportunity to grow, to learn, and to come back to myself again and again. Because inner strength isn’t about never falling. It’s about knowing that, no matter what happens, there is something within you that can rise. And once you find it, you realize it was there all along.