I know what you are thinking, another article about self-discovery or perhaps yet another piece on finally letting loose and being loud. Maybe you think that I am actually penning this to convince myself that I am content with who I am, when in actuality, my biggest concern is what people think when they think of me. However, this really was the year when I decided I do not care what people think of me, and the results have been worthwhile.
From the time I was in middle school I cared immensely about what people thought of me, even the idea of a single individual not liking me turned me off to the point of self-examination. What’s wrong with me? Why don’t people like me? What do people like in a person? Needless to say, the anxiety of how I was perceived by other people caused a reaction of ultimately trying to change who I was.
I was once told that my voice was shrilly, so I tried to speak with a deeper tone. I was told that I was too impulsive and unpredictable so I remained mostly quiet when I met new people. In consequence, I muted and twisted my personality and myself to satisfy what I thought others wanted, attempts I thought would make myself likable.
It started with social media, the amount of likes I got after double posting on Instagram to be exact. I noticed that the second picture I posted received a significantly lower amount of likes than the first post of that day, and for the first time in a very long time, I did not care. After all, why should I care? My social media pages are not designed to make me question whether I did enough to satisfy my followers for the day.
A similar chain of events followed my Instagram epiphany regarding how highly I prioritized the way people thought of me. I started including myself in topics revolving in a high judgement factor like politics and the election. I started speaking my mind more freely rather than sitting still and debating over if I would be talked about more if I engaged in conversation and said something disagreeable or if I did not contribute. On the way back from a show on Broadway, my friends and I sang show tunes on the subway, and it was entirely normal.
What I realized was that when I desperately attempted to craft myself as a person who would be liked by everyone, I did not take into account that everyone’s normal is different. Strange differs from person to person, fun differs from person to person as well as everyone’s general perspective on a person differing. When I stopped caring about what people thought of me I became happier, more self-loving, more outspoken, more importantly, I stopped being so incredibly hard on myself. When I stopped caring about what people thought about me I was able to wake up in the morning and truly be satisfied with who I am as a person.
Of course, I do not completely dismiss any scrutiny or judgement that comes my way now, there is a critical contrast between caring about how you present yourself and how you appear to the world and making decisions based on how others will perceive you. I care about how my professors and employers view my work ethic and performance, but I refuse to care if I am up to par with someone’s likes and standards to the point where I am changing myself.
