Maintaining Your Sense of Self

This is the first message that’s going to turn into my first blog post. What I want to talk about today is maintaining your sense of self.

The copy of yourself people build

It’s very easy to get caught up in what people want you to be, or what you think you should be, or the idea your friends or your parents have about you. You kind of get built into this copy of yourself that people have been telling you about. You should go to college. You should go to college here, and you should get married here. At this age, you do this. At this age, you do that.

It gets to the point where a lot of people grow up and don’t have the willingness or the wherewithal to overcome that. And you start to live someone else’s life.

The first step is being aware of it

If you’re reading this post, you’re most likely like me: you’ve had similar thoughts about what you were told, and why. The first step to realizing all of this is being aware of it. So if you found yourself on this page reading this, then you’re on the right track.

I’m not saying this is the end goal. I’m still speaking about this; I haven’t figured it out myself. But the first step is always to be aware of it. Once you’re aware of the story you’re being told, you can start to deconstruct the idea of you that was sold to you.

That deconstruction is more of a journey without a definite end, because life itself has no definite end besides death. The main thing is to be on the path. Once you’re on the path, in my opinion, you’ve basically already won. And what that path means to you could be drastically different from someone else.

Moving toward what you’re naturally drawn to

Once you start to realize the pattern of falsities and stories people have told you, you can start to move toward the things you’re naturally drawn to.

For example, me: I like to be alone. A lot of people say being alone is not good for you mentally, but I find it’s the exact opposite. I think being alone is really good for me mentally. I’m not saying 100% alone, but the majority of the time I like to spend alone, in introversion. It’s kind of how I grew up.

However, you will get shamed. I get shamed constantly for being alone:

You shouldn’t be alone, though. You shouldn’t be alone. What’s going on? Are you okay?

My phone is also on permanent Do Not Disturb, because I don’t want my phone to dictate when I pick it up and use it. I want to use it when I feel like using it.

It’s not your job to manage what people think

A lot of people have issues with those two things about me: being alone, and my phone not making me accessible. It turns me into a kind of enigma in some sense, where people take it personally. They take your behavior, or the way you protect yourself, as a slight toward them.

It makes sense why they do this. But I’ve grown to the point where — it’s not that I don’t care — it’s not my responsibility to manage people’s perceptions, or their emotions, or their beliefs. I can’t go around micromanaging everyone’s beliefs about me. If you want to believe something about me, that’s fine. As long as I’m doing no harm in this world, I’m okay with the consequences of people thinking falsities or coming up with their own definition of what kind of character I have. I’m 100% fine with that.

Let them

To wrap this up, since I don’t want to get too off topic on my first post: seek out the things that make you happy. Seek out the things you’re interested in. If you want to leave your phone on Do Not Disturb, do that. If someone has something to say about it, let them.

That’s a message I want to pass along on this blog a lot. There are a lot of thoughts on how to cope with the harshness of the world, the harshness of judgment, dealing with people’s judgment. I’ve come a long way in my adulthood to figure out that you should just let people be. Let people do. Let people think. Just let them. That’s the main thing: let them. And who cares? As long as I know the truth about what’s going on inside my own head, I’m okay with the results.

I hope you enjoyed this post and got something from it. There will be many more to come, and a lot of what I post here is going to be a little open-ended, so stick with me. I appreciate you for listening — well, not listening. I appreciate you for reading, even though I’m speaking this. I hope to see you again.