Are you shrinking yourself to become more digestible to others?

A guide to become your wholesome self!

We often shrink ourselves to be liked by others or in fear of getting judged by family, and friends. Although it is important historically to get validation from others, in modern society it hardly serves any purpose, in fact it works against us. We are often told to change the way we talk, think, act and even laugh to sound like others. Society doesn’t like when individuals have the freedom to express and the live the life on their own terms.

We are often robbed of appreciation and love just because we are not like our peers or family, the comparison and the competition with others has the worst impact on anybody’s early years.

This starts at School, we start witnessing the comparison, parents wanting their children to perform academically, putting pressure to score more than their own friends. We start developing perfectionism, manipulation and moving away from ourself in order to please and the conditional love around us. I grew up watching and witnessing all the kids lying to parents about various preferences and passions in order to fit into the perfect child. I call it perfect child syndrome.

We seldom ask questions to the parents and elders about the expectations and the pressure they burden us with. Most of us start masking our real self, the things that light us up, doing the things for the sake of it, in most cases even sacrificing whole life’s worth peace and joy to just get validation from others. This affects more women then men, since women’s expectations and the validations are based on a lot of societal and patriarchal structures.

We grew up thinking we need to be liked by everyone around us, we can’t fathom thinking about someone not approving of us or the choices we have made. what this does is, you are trying to fit into 100 different perspectives in life rather than one true perspective that matters the most is yourself.

The only person you are destined to please and change in life is for yourself, and betterment of your wellness. You can do this exercise, by making the list of things you have changed or tried changing to please someone in life, slowly transforming them to do something that is aligned with you and your own beliefs. You will surprised the amount things in our lives are dedicated by external world.

I often get asked about how I chose a different path as a career, made unconventional choices and the assumption is that ‘I don’t care about other’s opinions’, the fact is not ‘I don’t care’ but I care deeply, but only about my wellbeing and the peace of my inner world.

We are not on this planet to please anybody’s idea of us. Be loud, unapologetically you, dance like no ones watching, laugh whole heartedly, dress the way you want, set boundaries, decide what do you want in life and how you want spend each day in your life; Become picky of where you are spending your energy and who are you letting into your inner world.

Take one step at a time, changing one habit, one thought and backing yourself every time you take a step out of the comfort zone, it will have a ripple effect on your whole being and you will never go back giving that power to anyone else.

Take up the space, tits up and shine on! The world doesn’t need people like your parents, friends or your family. It needs ‘YOU’, all of you.