There are moments in life when you feel strong, confident, and brave. As a consequence, you feel attractive, beautiful, and young. However, and I am talking now in first person, one needs to know how to make such moments last; because someone only needs to say something slightly unlucky, or if something doesn’t go the way you expected it, and I am not even saying wrong, just not as good as expected, the tables turn to the negative. And suddenly, that positive feeling becomes exactly the contrary, which tends to be long and tiring. Why the euphoric moment only concentrates always in small drops of happiness, short instants, intense, but timely, and, when the mirror shows its negative side however, these are long lasting feelings we don’t know how to overcome? We should believe more in ourselves, have more faith, and not listen that much to those who surround us and influence us to change what we feel or think, or more even, we are so silly sometimes that we allow them to have power. We allow them to break that tiny moment in which we are happy, in which we feel complete. To whom has this not happened? To me, many times, and I am still trying to fight against it. I am trying to listen to myself, and not to others, to trust what I believe and do without the need of examining myself daily. To know how to do my best to combine both my professional career and my family without forgetting about myself and the moments that are only for me. But it is not easy, you have to be ready. However, there are some techniques that can help you accomplish it; and reading this book written by Gemma Lienas is a way to take the first step.

In UN TESORO ESCONDIDO, published by Comanegra both in Spanish and Catalan, for the main character, Eva, everything tumbles and starts falling apart because of something that one of her neighbors says about her job. She loses her self-confidence and she seems unable recover from it. From that moment, everything goes wrong for her, she can only think in negative terms, she sees herself as incompetent, clumsy, ugly and incapable of doing anything. And even less capable of doing the conference she has programed for the weekend. As the week goes on, her lack of self-confidence grows and Eva enters a state of sadness and disdain for herself. But her friend Luz comes to help her and enlightens Eva’s way towards the recovery of her confidence and her abilities. Along a number of days, Luz talked to her about the deforming mirrors and how some people attack our image to position themselves above us. Luz shows Eva how to break her silence, since she is not the only person in such situation. She also shows her how to modify her interior monologue to stop devaluating herself constantly, to convince her that she is capable of many things, to relax, to establish positive connections that will help her day after day to build her own identity independently from others. She will also have to help other women not to fall in the same problem. First with the help of Luz, and then all by herself, Eva will be able to reestablish relations with her son, couple, mother, and above all, with herself. In the final scene we see how she is able to successfully give that conference she was so scared about at the start of the week.

This book is a small gem, short, but in which one will learn about the importance of self-confidence and the confidence of women. It offers very helpful tools to work with these two themes, that are, to many women, the Achilles’ heel of life. A simple text, direct and at the same time smart and with history, that profoundly connects with the reader. For those of us who live between work, family, and our personal care, but that also, many times feel like losing confidence only because of a minimum but toxic gesture of someone around us, or even for a personal thought that makes us feel unstable and insecure. To me, a compulsory reading that has helped me strengthen what I believe. A must read.