GrowTalk interview with David44.
For the people that don’t know you, can you tell us where you’re from, where you grew up and what your childhood was like?
I was born in Iceland. My parents are icelandic, but now I live in Denmark, Copenhagen. I grew up a lot of different places as my father worked for the ministry of foreign affairs. I went to like 10 different elementary schools or something. I kind of settled here in Denmark when I was a teenager and I’ve been here ever since.
So, David you want to talk about self-esteem and self-confidence. This is obviously something that you have experienced in your life. Could you explain, for the people the people that are watching, what is self-esteem to you?
Just like self-belief. Like many other people I guess, growing up I was always told that I could do whatever I wanted. I was made to believe that I was perfect in every way. And I had a very good childhood and a very loving family.
But, when life hits you, you know. It can be hard to maintain that self-belief when you grow up. When you’re not in the safety net of your parents. When no one is there around you to tell you that you’re great you kind of get tested. I guess I wasn’t really ready for that in many ways.
I’ve always had huge self-confidence. At least I thought, you know. Then I met some people I felt like outweighted me in that aspect of life.
Break that habit of not believing in yourself and work on that a lot. Hang out with people that believe in themselves and that’s kind of contagious
I think you really touched an interesting area right there. Most people deal with having a low self-esteem in life. We all experience something like that. Would you say that people fake?
If you need to buy stuff and you need to have a lot of followers or you need to project a sort of image of your life that’s not true, then that’s fake self-esteem. You’re projecting a life-style that’s fake to people that look up to that. And those poeople are kind of looking for the answer and looking towards these influencers and that give them that fake hope of what life is supposed to be.
And then, there’s real self-steem that’s just beautiful. It’s organic and comes from within and really can inspire other people because it’s genuine.
In regard to people faking it? Yes definitely, a lot of people are faking their own confidence and self-esteem to hide the fact that they’re feeling terrible on the inside. I’d rather have an honest conversation about ‘what makes you not believe in yourself’ then to tell you that I believe in myself in a weird way to make myself feel better than you.
Where most low self-esteem feelings come from
Just like any feeling, having a low self-esteem comes from somewhere. It comes from within. So, what happens or what goes wrong when somebody does not feel comfortable in their skin?
- That definitely comes the childhood I guess if you have parents that haven’t made you believe in yourself.
- It also comes from experiences
- It comes from bad relationships
- It comes from friends that aren’t good to hangout with
- It comes from social media
- It comes from television
- It comes from all kinds of places
It’s your responsibility to filter out the bad and filter in the good. Not all people have the tools to do that. Not all people have parents that love them, not all people have good friends. And that’s the weird part about it because you can go into a vicious circle where you stop believing in yourself and then you get in bad relationships, get bad people around you. You spiral downwards.
You can just by believing in yourself change your life for the better. Because if you project that energy out into the universe it comes back to you. Also how many success experiences you’ve had. Success experiences don’t necesarily need to mean that you make a lot of money. It can also be like small success experiences like for example someone that you like says that they love you. Or you fall in love. You clean your appartment or whatever. Small success experiences, large and small, they give a confidence boost.
So, self-esteem comes from self-esteem so to say. Like, if you’re around self-esteem you get more self-esteem. If you’re around people and around the energy of ‘not believing in yourself’ that kind of replicates itself in you. It’s a lot from the environment that you’re in I guess.
I like how you say that you have to stop believe in anything that is bad for you. Because it obviously affects the way you think and the way you view yourself.
At some point in your life you realized that you had a low self-esteem. You mentioned that comes from the environment that you were in. How did you deal and cope with that fact that you were realizing that “there’s something wrong with me and the way a view myself”. And how did you cope with that?
That’s a great question. I was 23 or 24 I guess and I was engaged. I was in a very bad relationship and I asked her to marry me because I thought that would save our relationship. I was a bartender full time. I was drinking too much. I was in a bad environment. I was hanging out with people who gave up on their dreams. I had a bad time, you know.
Then I had a great friend that just told me how it was. He looked at me and said “dude, you look unhappy”. He kind of forced me to take a stance in what I wanted to do in life. That answer was definitely music. I always wanted to do music. I never believed that I could do music. He kind of inspired me to take a shot at it. Long story short, 6 months after that I quit my job and left my fiancé, I started knocking on doors. At studios in Copenhagen. And luckily one of the studios gave me a job. Like I was talking about earlier I had a lot of success experiences. I got hired at a studio, which was a success for me because I didn’t know how to make music, like profesionally. I taught myself how to produce. So every day was a success to me because I was learning something new every day. That then turned into me signing a deal with a label.
You don’t get a great success experience unless you have a thousand small ones before. I was having those every day after a pretty bad time in my life. And that definitely how I dealt with getting out of self-esteem issues and not believing in myself.
This is going to sound very basic, but I just didn’t care anymore about the consequences of my decisions. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. I that kind of led into this nice transformation of believing in myself more.
Practical steps to grow your self-esteem
What you just said is very powerful to me. And I’m a big believer of doing more of what makes you happy. You talk about those little successes. Day after day, week after week and month after month. When you look back, you see a huge success. I love what you said. But for many people it’s not easy to go from a place of low self-esteem to having a big self-esteem. So, what would you say to people who are in a place where they don’t view themselves in a great way and they need to navigate to a surrounding, an environment that is much better for them. What would you say them?
Ask yourself a very important question; “what do you enjoy in life?” And “what makes you happy?”
I know that’s a very simple question, but that can be very difficult to answer. Once you’ve established something that makes you happy, and it can be anything. It can be building tables. It can be baking food. It can be running. It can be whatever. Once you’ve figured out what makes you happy it’s from then on it’s about practical things. It’s about more practical things than you actually think, I believe. It’s about isolating yourself and do more practical things that take you towards that goal.
As I said, that goal can be anything but most importantly you have to move yourself out of a bad environment. You have to realize that you’re in a bad environment. You need to love yourself more than you care about non-important stuff. You have to find a very deep heartfelt love for yourself. Believe that you have one life and you’re the most important thing. Just like in an airplane, you have to put your mask on yourself before you help others. That’s the same way it is in life. If you’re feeling terrible about yourself you need to stop prioritizing other people and focus on yourself. And focusing on yourself, if you’re in a bad environment, you need to isolate yourself.
Stop being afraid of being happy. Because it’s possible for every person to be happy I believe.
The key to developing self-esteem
I love the way you finished your answer. What is your tip of the day. For anyone that is in this situation right now and if they could hear something, according to you, is key to developing self-esteem. For anyone going through a low self-esteem right now, what is your tip?
Use your feelings and put them into words. Every time I’m stuck in life, I don’t communicate. Every time I move forward in life, I’m communicating. By that I mean talk about how you feel. Talking about how you feel can almost solve a problem.
A lot of people think they’re not worth the conversation. A lot of people think that it doesn’t matter how they feel. “Nobody wants to talk to me about this, this is irrelevant to other people.” And that’s just nonsense. Every single time I talk to my wife about how I feel, I feel better. Every time she talks to me about how she feels I can see that she feels better. It’s a very very simple thing. If you know that something’s wrong, just grab somebody you love and say “something’s wrong, and I’m not really sure where I’m going with this, but just need to talk to you for 5 minutes.” It’s a way of solving how you feel, it’s a way of you realizing how you feel while you talk.
Don’t be too “think before you talk”. Just talk. Talk to somebody. I think that’s very very important.
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Where to follow David44’s content and music online
How can we follow you, David. You make music. What ways, what channels can people find your music, your content and what you do and follow you.
My artist name is “David44”. Just “David” and two 4’s in the back. Whatever streaming service you use, you can find me on there. I’m also on Instagram, that’s David44 as well. Whatever social media or streaming service you use, I’m on it!
