Caution: Tough love ahead
Photo by Hiroshi Kimura on Unsplash
If you’re in your middle age of life you may have been raised believing (consciously or unconsciously) that your value was determined by the opinions of the people around you. Pre-internet that meant your dad, your mom, siblings, friends, teachers, and co-workers.
If they liked you, you were winning. If you served everyone around you well and did all the right things, you could feel like a good person. You could feel loved, appreciated, or valued.
But, what happened when your efforts backfired? When your friends or family didn’t appreciate your help, got upset because you did it wrong, yelled at you, or – worse?
How did that make you feel then?
Looking back over your life, how many years would you say you’ve spent turning yourself inside out to appease others, to “make them happy”, so you could feel valued and loved in return?
If you’re like me, the answer would be: “All of them”.
Changing yourself to make other people happy sounds like a noble pursuit, some of us even became experts. It seemed harmless – why wouldn’t we want to try and make others happy?
I’ll give you 3 reasons why:
- It’s a moving target. People are human beings, so what worked yesterday might not work today. And when you don’t get the desired result on your first try, you have to scramble to become someone, or something, else. You have to keep trying different ways to fit yourself into their puzzle.
- Technically, it’s mental and emotional manipulation. We try to say the right thing at the right time to the right person, so they’ll feel good and react in a way that makes us feel good in return. Even if we’re doing it with the best intentions, it’s not only inauthentic, it’s exhausting.
- And the most important reason: By fitting yourself into everyone else’s puzzle, and becoming who (you think) they need you to be (yes, even to your kids), you will never get to know who you are. And, sadly, neither will they.
So, big deal, right? What does that even mean?
I believe we are put on this earth to help others, to love and support the people we come in contact with every day. But I also believe we are meant to discover what each of us is capable of, individually.
I believe every one of us has been gifted with different abilities and talents. Wouldn’t it be a tragedy if we lived our whole lives never finding out what we were capable of? Of finding out what our gifts and talents were that might allow us to help so many MORE people than we could even imagine?
You don’t have to stop loving and serving the people around you. But I would like to offer that you could be so much more to them by being more to yourself.
Start by getting to know yourself like you would a new best friend…what do you like? What do you not like? If you were suddenly on an island with no one else around would you know how to act? Or who to be? Would you feel freedom, or terror?
I’m not saying you have to quit your current life and become someone different (you were already doing that, remember? 🙂). And you don’t have to come up with some grand plan or make drastic changes to your current lifestyle.
I think a lot of us are afraid of finding out who we are, or who we could be. We mistakenly believe it’s better to let everyone else around us steer our ship for fear that we might make a mistake.
But the real mistake is never giving our true selves a chance.
Get to know yourself.
Then become accepting of yourself.
Then become loving to yourself.
Then become true to yourself.
Once you do that, you can be accepting, loving, and true to everyone else around you.
Be the example of what it means to be your own person, to live your life on your own terms.
Discover What’s Possible.