Becoming who you are.
Image by Kindred Cinema
I've been thinking a lot about my story and how I've gotten to this particular place. This curly haired, weird glasses wearing, bright sweater owning girl is me now - but it's the ying to the yang of the past few years.
I use to be a huge people-pleaser. In the name of acceptance, I always took other people's’ advice, I always deeply considered suggestions given to me about my life. I always convinced myself ‘their way was right’. When building my business I would have 10 tabs with other people’s websites open so I could cobble together ‘the best of’ what I saw out there because someone told me they didn’t like what I had already built (quote, it was too ‘bold’). I have made life decisions upon a passing comment and then blamed others for my poor choice. These are not easy words to type.
Finally, a few years ago I found myself sitting on my big brown chair in my living room, tears dripping into my coffee, ‘deeply contemplating’ more life advice I had been given the day before. I’ll spare you the details, but in a nutshell after years of being told I wasn’t ‘enough’ (holy enough, thin enough, pretty enough, creative enough) I was weighing new advice that I was ‘too much’ (too successful, too talkative, too loud, too busy, too happy...all adding up to ‘too unapproachable’).
Looking back, I was too unapproachable. But I had no idea how to temper who I was with what I was expected to be. I sometimes felt like I was being forced into a box of 'who I was expected to be' and so I went in the opposite direction. I have shut people out of my life that I shouldn't have. I have pressed advice on friends who didn't need it. I pushed people away, and was good at it. I was becoming a person I never wanted to be.
I say all this to really say...and this is important that you hear this.
Who you are right now doesn't have to be who you are becoming.
You can change.
There is permission available for you to change course. Take it and run in the direction of the person you dream of being. Believe you can, embrace you can, implant it in your soul. Tell your besties...open up...be vulnerable about your state of affairs and where you want to go - you don't have to walk towards the light alone.
Did you feel like this post lit up a part of you that needs to be let into the light? Hit the heart button below to let others know we're in this journey of becoming together.
Photo by Alex Good