I thought about a comment a friend made recently. She said out loud what has been replaying in my head for so long. She said that I don’t share my news and life easily. She would be bursting to say what was happening and going on if in my shoes.
This wasn’t news to me, I knew I hid a lot of what was going on for me, and I just hadn’t worked out how to change. I felt embarrassed most of the time, I felt like my life was just one disaster after another. I’d learned as most of us do to believe that being wrong was bad.
I felt like I shouldn’t make mistakes. That only right was good and ok.
So I hid all my mistakes, my life, and myself away because it’s not perfect. I waited to have the ‘right outcome’ before I would talk about what I was doing, so if it didn’t work out ‘right’ or ‘perfectly’ I could hide from it.
I didn’t want to put myself out there for fear of failure or being judged.
I had been choosing fear. Fear that I wouldn’t be accepted? or Valued? or Loved? And do you know what, it’s just a conclusion I came to years ago to protect myself, and maybe at that time it did protect me? If you don’t share yourself you can’t be teased or ridiculed. But it became maladaptive, keeping me in fear, holding me back from sharing my real self.
The realisation came slowly but powerfully.
No one is going to accept, value, or love me until I do that for myself. We get so distracted with the outside world that we believe we need others to show us respect in order to feel respected. Need others to love us to feel love. Others to value us to feel valued. We have forgotten that we are the creators. That we are making the choices, we are choosing the thoughts and behviours every minute of our lives that culminate in how we feel moment to moment.
I decided to stop choosing fear
Are you choosing fear? Is it keeping you from taking a risk? Do you feel like you are hiding who you really are?
Once this belief was in my awareness I could change it, and I have…this blog is a testament to that! want to learn how too?
Beautiful photo from Unsplash– Chase fade (Thank you)