JOURNAL: TRYING TO LOVE MYSELF

I was raised in a family where outward appearance and reputation were important. No one ever explicitly told me, “What other people think of you is more important than being your true self,” yet that’s what I learned to believe. It became my mission to be accepted by others, because I thought that only then would I be worthy of love.

I spent most of my middle school and high school years pretending to be somebody that I wasn’t. I would “chameleon” to blend in with people around me.

I suspect that due to my less-than-stellar acting skills, a lot of people could tell that I was being phony and didn’t want to hang out with me. This only increased my hunger for external validation and acceptance.

I finally received the honest feedback that would change my life forever:

I showed up as arrogant, selfish, self-righteous, superior, and judgmental.

The feedback hit me like a ton of bricks. I was simultaneously composed and totally shocked.

I was composed because I knew that people experienced me in those ways: I was a condescending know-it-all with judgment by the boatload, and little tolerance for people “doing it the wrong way” (not my way). My demeanor was often cold and closed off, and I could easily insult people where I knew it would hurt.

I was shocked, because when I received that feedback from somebody that I’d met less than six hours earlier, I felt completely vulnerable. I didn’t know what to do with myself in that moment of being completely exposed.

The walls that I’d created to “protect” my authentic self were only pushing (or rather, shoving) everyone else away. I finally decided to make a change. And thus began my journey of rediscovering my true self.

To say that it was a battle would be a grave understatement. The little voice inside my head had gotten really good at convincing me of “truths” that were actually just thoughts based in my false beliefs about reputation and acceptance.

Lying to myself had become such a subconscious process for me that bringing it into my consciousness on a daily basis was a struggle.

Right after receiving the feedback, I’d keep “be authentic” on the forefront of my mind for a few days at a time. But more often than not, my commitment to being authentic would slowly fade behind my decades of pretending to be somebody else, and I often wouldn’t even notice the shift.

When I’d realize that I wasn’t being perfectly authentic, every moment of every day, I’d go into beat-up mode and would berate myself for being a failure.

My new awareness seemed like a game of lose-lose: if I ventured out into authentic living and slipped back into my old ways, I’d go into beat-up mode; if I acted like I was okay with being my pretending old self, I’d feel sick to my stomach about who I was pretending to be. I didn’t know how to win that game.

I spent a couple of years on the rollercoaster ride of stepping out and being authentic, slipping back into my old ways, and beating myself up about it; it was exhausting. But then I learned that personal development isn’t a switch, it’s a journey.

I couldn’t just turn off my old behaviors and turn on some new authentic behaviors.

Creating lasting change would take commitment, practice, and most importantly self-compassion.

Commitment meant truly committing myself to being authentic, and doing it for nobody else but me. And practice meant making conscious choices to set my authentic self free instead of staying in the box I’d built for myself.

The self-compassion piece was the most important because it determined whether or not I wanted to pick myself back up, dust myself off, and give it another go.

If making a mistake was only going to end in me beating myself up about it, then I’d rather not have even attempted it. But if making a mistake was met with a desire to learn, and then re-approach my ways of being in a new way, it was a much easier choice to make.

Throughout my journey of discovering and living as my authentic self, I have experienced moments of immense joy and freedom, which have encouraged me to continue moving forward.

But one day—and I can’t remember exactly when it happened—I just decided to do it. I knew that deep down in my heart I wanted to, so I refused to let that little voice stop me anymore. If people were going to think that being my authentic self was “weird” then so be it!

I wish I could say “and then I shut the little voice up forevermore and lived happily ever after,” but that wouldn’t be true. My little voice was screaming  But I just chose to acknowledge the screaming and ignored it anyways.

When I limit myself because of my fear of what others might think of me, I’m limiting what I think of me. When I truly embrace my authentic self, I am free.

Abraham Maslow said, “What is life for? It is for you.” 

 Most people, at the first sign of distress, would rather deny the hard truth than face it.  But the truth does not cease to exist when it is ignored.  When you try to ignore it, you will find yourself living a lie every day as the truth haunts your thoughts every night.  Don’t do this to yourself.  Face the facts.  You simply can’t get away from your truth by moving dishonestly from one place to the next.

The truth will set you free, but first it may tick you off for a while, and that’s OK.  It’s always better to be hurt by the truth than comforted by a lie.  Because the truth hurts only once and then gradually fades, but a lie hurts just as bad every single time you remember you’re living it.

There’s the cold feet pain of moving on ‒ graduating, taking the next step, walking away from the familiar and into the unknown.  There’s the sharp growing pains of trial and error, of failing as you learn the best way forward.  There’s the immense, dizzying pain of life slapping you in the face when everything you thought you knew wasn’t true, or everything you had planned for falls through.

There are the more ambiguous aches and pains of success, when you actually get what you had hoped for, but then realize that it’s not quite what you had envisioned.  And then, from time to time, there are the warm, tingling pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of sweet perfection, a priceless instant of achievement or happiness which you know cannot possibly last, and yet will remain with you forever.

Even though so many folks forget, pain is actually a good thing.  It means you’re breathing, and trying, and interacting with the endless possibilities in this world.  Pain is for the living only; it’s worth fully accepting and dealing with while you still have a chance.