It’s OK not to be the same as everyone else.
For me, this is one of the most joyful parts of getting older.
Allowing myself to choose what feels right for me, without having to keep everyone else happy.
Because for so much of my life, being the same as everyone else felt like the most important thing in the world. Fitting in felt literally like survival, and when I felt like I didn’t, it was pretty painful.
So how do you get to this place of being OK with who you are?
DIFFEREST STROKES
I’ll say it again. It’s OK not to be the same as everyone else. The world would be a very boring place if we were all the same. Moulding ourselves to fit in with what we think the world, or other people need, is often a learned behaviour or coping mechanism from childhood. But no matter how hard we try to get people to like us, there are always going to be people who just don’t. We outgrow people, we outgrow situations, we change. That means that sometimes we need to be OK with letting go of older versions of ourselves, even if that disappoints people, in order to be more authentically ourselves. Also, there is no ‘right’ way to do things. The best way is the way that is right for you.
GETTING OLDER
The media, the world, made us all think that getting older was going to be this big bad thing. I remember being 21 and thinking that life would be over at 41. Man, how wrong was I. Getting older for me has meant getting more comfortable in my own skin. At 21 the world’s opinion of me meant way more to me than my opinion of myself. Because of that, my happiness and peace were totally at the mercy of things that happened externally. This is the key thing that’s changed for me as I get older. Heck yeah I’d still love my youthful glow and energy of that younger self, but I’m very happy to trade that for knowing and liking myself better. Being more secure in myself means that all that external noise impacts me less. I’m more solid in myself because I know who I am more, and that is powerful.
KNOWING YOURSELF
The older I get the better I know myself because I’ve worked really hard to do that (therapy, podcasts, yoga, self care, more therapy, more podcasts). I’m more connected to what I feel, why I feel it, taking pleasure when the happy emotions show up and allowing for what the harder emotions are there to teach me. I really believe that the more we know ourselves, the more we like ourselves because we understand our actions, feelings and behaviours. We begin to make sense to ourselves, we stop abandoning ourselves. Through understanding comes empathy. Knowing yourself can mean that it’s ok when your choices don’t align with the status quo or what others expect from you.
LETTING GO
It is so liberating and so freeing when we’re able to let go of that need to please others, or to desperately try to fit in, and we can just finally relax into being more ourselves. It’s not something that happens overnight. there can be a real process of letting go of expectations both of ourselves and from other people, but I believe real wisdom comes when we learn to let go of what no longer serves us, and we can be at peace with who we really are, as different as that may be from everyone else.
