Free Yourself to Be Yourself

Are you satisfied with who you truly are and what personality you have been gifted with? Most of us if we are honest with ourselves would wish to be someone different. I wanted to be Kylie Minogue. She’s gorgeous, confident and people crowd around her in awe. The true reason I wanted to be like her was because she has an outgoing personality. Whereas I am by nature an introvert.

For instance in school, particularly high school the need for acceptance took on another level of importance and priority. Suddenly you find yourself surrounded by teenagers searching for an identity within the various groups. We’ve all watched mean girls hehe and we can recognise the different cliques, the popular and not so popular, the athletic and the straight A’s and our worst nightmare, the rebels. Throughout high school I tended to fit into the not so popular group.

With poor self-esteem hanging on my back I was always described as the shy and quiet girl in all of my reports. When other kids poked fun at me I just withdrew into my shell in an attempt to hide. Being the center of attention was possibly the worst thing that could ever happen to me. Whenever I started comparing myself to the popular girls I felt even more defeated. These loud girls  would monopolise all the attractive boys attention and seemed to emanate confidence. It was as though nothing bothered them and life was perfect. While that may have been the case with some of them it didn’t occur to me until I got older that even loud and seemingly confident people can be insecure.

When I was living through insecurity I was unable to be myself. The insecurity squashed my personality on a regular basis. I dealt with it  by retreating inwardly with the purpose of keeping myself safe. This meant that I would shy away when asked to participate in class or group situations requiring me to speak in front of others. It also ensured that I would not go to the graduation as there was too much possibility of looking like the odd one out. Even though I am not the same person as I was when I was younger I am still a fairly quiet person. Being more on the quiet side is who I am and I don’t think I could ever be a loud person even if I tried. It would be exhausting for me! It took me years to figure out that it was OK to be a quiet personality type. If we were all loud imagine how noisy the world would be and if we were all quiet it would be too quiet.

If being accepted by others requires  you to  have to change who you truly are then it is not worth the friendship. Find friends that give you room to be yourself and most importantly embrace who you are! You were made with a purpose in mind that no one else can fulfill but you, so why would you want to be someone you are not. Focus on the strengths that you have instead of the weaknesses, and those strengths will develop to such a point that you won’t be so consumed by the areas that trip you up. Everyone has a place in this world 🙂