What if I decide I am enough, just being myself?

I don’t need everyone to like me. I've decided that I like me.

Having permission to like yourself as you are might seem like a simple thing to want.

But it gets more complicated once we include the opinions of others. We sometimes mistakenly believe that we need others to like us before we get to like ourselves, that they are the ones who decide if we are likable or not. We are encouraged from a young age to fit in and be liked, and we are told how we should be so people will like us. We learn by example, seeing how others do this. It’s painful to be alone and isolated, each of us wants connection and communication with others.

Whether it’s because we want to belong, feel at home, fit in and feel safe in a group, or maybe it’s because we need to be seen in a certain way - to stand out, have a certain status, we tend to want others to approve of and like us. But sometimes we try really hard, and people still don’t respond warmly, or act kindly. Is it okay to like ourselves if others don’t?

This can be a lot for a sensitive person to handle, it’s hard to not take it personally, or make it our fault, as in “What did I do wrong? Why don’t they like me?’” Especially if we care whether or not they like us, because we want them to like us.

We don’t understand yet that not everyone is going to approve of us and that’s not a problem for us to solve. The people pleasers among us will have a hard time with this.

As a psychic child (and children are very psychic until we are told it’s not good and nobody will like it), I could see when others were not being real.

I didn’t judge this, I was observing and learning. I didn’t know I was psychic and that being psychic was a thing, I was just being me.

Though I had lots of friends and people I liked and who liked me, I felt different and weird around some of the popular kids, who all seemed a cut above the rest of us. I wondered if maybe I was missing something, or didn’t know what they knew. I felt judged and looked down on, which I now understand was energy, and that they were mostly just as insecure as I was.

It all gets so much stickier as we get old enough to discern hierarchy, and to emulate what we’ve seen adults do our entire lives, to want to be popular, liked, and approved of by the People Who Matter.

Often that means looking down on those not included in this group, whether because they’re not pretty or good looking enough, don’t have enough wealth, or are unusual or different in some way that isn’t approved of by the group. Maybe they just don’t fit in.

What I realized as a young person was that I wanted to be me.

It seemed that in order to be accepted and approved of, I had to match to the group, especially to whichever girl was the queen bee at school that year. I was supposed to dress like them, act like them, and like the same things they did. I wasn’t interested in doing this, it felt uncomfortable and phony to me, plus I couldn’t have done it if I’d tried.

One memory that stands out is a birthday party I attended for a girl I’d been friends with since we were 7. As young girls, we were neighbors and friends, we liked each other. In 6th grade that all changed at this birthday party. I felt out of place with the girls at this party, some of them weren’t my usual friends. It felt to me as if I was somehow out of step with all of them, and I didn’t understand why.

I couldn’t change myself to fit into the group, I naively expected the group to accept me as I was. I’d wonder why some of them couldn’t see me, or accept that I liked the things I liked.

I spent years feeling wrong because I couldn’t change myself to fit in with others.

My neighborhood was a very hierarchical place, like so many others. Many of the adults competed with their money and status. I didn’t notice that the money, vacations, fur coats, and expensive clothes made some of them any kinder or happier. The kind and fun people would be that way, regardless of their financial or social status.

Even though I tried to be liked by the people who didn’t, I couldn’t be anything other than myself, or the self I was being at the time. So I learned and listened and waited for the day I’d finally be enough and like myself.

Now I am extremely grateful to my stubborn spirit for bringing me through all of this. I was already an artist, and attracted to what was true for me, without regard for the acceptance of others.

Social media has only increased this for many of us.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve read or heard people say that social media, and Instagram in particular, makes them feel bad about themselves. The doom scroll comparison to how other people’s lives appear to be so much better, who look like they have it together much more than the rest of us, makes many people feel like they are doing something wrong.

Doom scrolling can be a way of avoiding doing what we need and want to do for ourselves, it can also be an indicator of fatigue or exhaustion, the need to simply unplug and Do. Nothing.

What if you are already exactly as you need to be right now? What if you’re not missing anything, and there’s nothing wrong with you? What if you were to know this is true?

We’ve become accustomed to looking for our flaws, to believe the unspoken rules that say that the only acceptable way to show up as a human is without anything amiss. Whether or not we’re conscious to all of this, to the ongoing internal battles fighting for our attention, they are there.

Those internal wars we wage against ourselves were learned, programmed into us at a deep subconscious level. They can also be ended, and peace declared. This takes some work on our part, which is well worth doing.

It’s possible to get really good at turning down those demands to examine and dissect our inadequacies, our lack-of. Even those who are practiced at looking polished and put together, the perfect golden ones among us, suffer from this perceived lack of … something. Something is missing / I am missing something.

Except, what if you aren’t missing anything?

What if today you are exactly as you need to be, flaws and all?

What if you are actually allowed to make a mess, be imperfect, spill your tea, say the wrong thing, make a mistake, and screw it all up? What if it’s actually what you came here for? What if we started teaching this early on, to everyone?

One of the things that would happen is that everyone would choose differently where to put their time, attention, money, creativity.

Advertisers would have to focus on something more rich and deep and interesting than our inherent fears. Girls and women would be freed from the centuries long expectation of beauty, motherhood, subservience, sweetness - what a lot of masks we all must wear to feel okay in this world. Sometimes to quite literally be safe!

Are the flowers, trees, bees, birds, and other creatures and life forms on this beautiful planet we inhabit worried about how they look or sound today? Or are they showing up every day as their real selves?

“I've been popular and unpopular, successful and unsuccessful, loved and loathed and I know how meaningless it all is. Therefore I feel free to take whatever risks I want.”

-Madonna