It’s not always easy being me.
Have you had days like this? I’m sure that I am not alone. We all have days when we aren’t the best version of ourselves.
There are times I wish I were more extroverted and make myself more open to others.
There are times I wish I were smarter and that my brain would function at a higher speed sometimes and retain information like others do.
My insecurities can get on my nerves.
The reality is that I can only be me. I can’t be anyone else. This is me and I have to live within the person I am. I can’t be anyone else. Good or bad, I can’t get away from me. I am everywhere I go. God made me and this is what I have in this life.
I spent many years trying to fulfill others' expectations of me. My parents, the church and others. I grew up living in a fishbowl. I was the preacher’s kid. Other kids like to make fun of me, and many adults were mean to me. That taught me to keep people at a distant and not to be too open in fear of getting hurt. I would learn people and know what I had to do to get their acceptance or approval. Pursuing the acceptance of others is an endless quest. You will never be satisfied if you are constantly playing the approval game to validate who you are.
For me, there came a time when I faced a transition in my life. Years of living a frustrating life finally came to a boiling point. The years of pleasing others left me empty and severely depressed. I felt constrained. I made some changes. Changes which many in my life at the time didn’t understand. One even commented that I was deceiving myself. The truth is that I had deceived myself for many years.
It was during that time that I encountered a line in a movie that said:
“Are you ready to be who you are?”
If you spend your life trying to please everyone the painful truth is that you won’t be happy and you won’t please everyone. You have to be happy with yourself and your life. Too many times people want us to walk in someone else’s footsteps when we need to walk our own footsteps.
If there’s one of the many things, I have learned about life it’s that everyone will not be a fan. You have to be comfortable at being you. Being who you are doesn’t mean you don’t care about people’s feelings, but you have to get to a place where others’ opinion of you is just that - opinions. Just because people have an opinion about you doesn’t mean it’s true. You need to be the best version of yourself that you can be, and you owe it to yourself to do that.
I have worked in offices throughout my life where there was always someone that others compared me to and expected me to meet the same expectations. There was a time when someone confronted me with the fact that I wasn’t doing something the way my predecessor had done. I looked at them directly and reminded them that I was not that person. I learned that I didn’t need the extra pressure of competing with someone else. The important thing was that I performed my job to the best of MY ability not in competition with someone else’s.
Are you ready to be who you are?
Don’t stay in the expectations of others. Be who you are.
