“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” ~Anna Quindlen
Being yourself seems like it would be an easy thing, right? Just be! But when you’re someone who has lived their life seeking the approval of others constantly, it’s not such an easy thing.
You have to attempt to move past years of trying to appear this way, wondering if people will judge you if do that, or doing your best not to cause waves and avoid conflict.
When you don’t fully understand who your “self” is, it’s pretty much impossible to actually be that person.
I didn’t realize just how deep my desire to please others went until very recently, after a couple of very deep soul searching years.
I saw how automatic it had become for me to try to be what everyone else wanted me to be. Even when I “liked” a page on Facebook, I thought twice about it and wondered if people would judge me for it.
I wanted to appear a certain way to people. I wanted to appear like I had it all together, that I was “perfect.” Most importantly, though, I didn’t want to appear disabled.
If I liked all of the “right” things, if I was cool, if I was funny, if I was pretty, and wore the most stylish clothes or had my makeup done just right, then maybe people would notice all of that instead of my muscular dystrophy and the limp that came with it.
Maybe they wouldn’t notice the difficulty I had going up stairs. If I fell, maybe they wouldn’t judge me because they would see I was awesome in so many other ways.
Trying to be everything to everyone is one of the most exhausting things. It feels like that toy that a lot of us used to play with when you try to fit the shaped blocks into the correct corresponding hole.
I was the triangle constantly trying to fit in the square hole.
I honestly don’t know how I even functioned sometimes in my twenty-plus years on earth with the weight of that on my shoulders. Worrying so much about what people thought or hoping they liked me and having no real sense of my own self.
From friends to coworkers, to dates or boyfriends, I was always trying to please everyone else but never thought to try please myself first or embrace who I really was.
It never even occurred to me that it was okay if some people didn’t like me, or if I didn’t have all the right clothes or that I wasn’t physically able to do all the same things that my peers could.
I didn’t realize that it didn’t make me any less worthy or valuable of a person if someone didn’t like me or if I wasn’t “perfect.”
That if a guy wasn’t interested or someone didn’t want to be my friend, that it didn’t mean I was ugly or worthless or needed to fix something about myself.
I didn’t realize that trying to fit myself into everyone else’s perceptions and society’s perception of “normal” was denying everyone and the world of all my gifts and who I really was. That my disability made me special and gave me a platform to try and help others all over the world with disabilities too.
That it gave me such a deep capacity for love and empathy that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
I couldn’t see that people don’t love each other because they’re perfect. They love each other for everything, including the flaws.
In fact, I think we love each other in large part because of our flaws. Because we are all human. Because we make mistakes.
Our imperfections and our differences are what set us apart and make us unique. When have you ever heard someone say, “I really like that Jackie. She’s just so perfect!”?
Not caring what other people think and just being is something we all struggle with in one way or another.
Something I’ve found to be very helpful for connecting with myself and just being is a kind of a brief meditation. Whether I’m driving, at work, on vacation, or just sitting at home, I try to take a few moments each day where I just sit, stop what I’m doing, take a deep breath in, and silence my mind.
I focus on the blood flowing through my veins or the way my breath feels when I exhale. I just let myself sit there in silence for a few minutes and just enjoy being in my skin, my body, and my spirit. As small as it may seem, it really helps to calm me and get me refocused on myself.
Learning to embrace yourself and shut out the need to people please or be what everyone else might want us to be is hard and it’s not something that can be an overnight change.
But learning to accept all of the parts of yourself, including the ones you may not like, is not only the greatest gift you can give to yourself, it’s the greatest gift you can give to the world around you too.
When you stop caring so much about what everyone else thinks of you and start becoming you, it’s then that you can truly offer the world the most.
You offer it you in all of your wonderful and unique glory!
Photo by Jason Rogers
About Jaclyn Witt
Jaclyn Witt is a 20-something who was born with a rare form of muscular dystrophy. She currently lives in Southern California and works as an Editorial Assistant. Her website http://imaspiring.wordpress.com details the trials and tribulations of being single and having a physical disability.
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 
Hi Jacklyn. Thanks for the article. Meditation is very very effective in bringing yourself back to your centre. I do it several times a day and find it to be very effective.
I realised a few years ago that other people’s opinions of me are just that – opinions. And there are 7 billion people with opinions in the world – all of them are never going to be favourable.
I remember reading a very powerful book by Wayne Dyer about 20 years ago which talked about the difference between events and our reactions to the events.
It’s important to recognise that our reaction to the event is independent of the event itself.
Let’s say someone says something very critical to me – In that situation my reaction is my choice. I don’t HAVE to be affected by their critical words. Sure society may have programmed me to to react in a certain way but I can make choices to train my brain to react differently. Easier said than done but still doable.
One of my greatest idols is Jon Morrow. He’s become one of the most famous bloggers in the world despite some incredibly challenging personal circumstances.
Have you heard of Jon? I’m currently doing a guest blogging course of his and it’s fantastic.
Hi Ash. Thank you so much for the feedback. You are exactly right, people might criticize us but we are ultimately the ones who have a choice in how we react to that criticism. I haven’t heard of Jon but I will definitely check him out!
I think the concept that’s underlying at least some of what you say is self-compassion. That’s something I discovered over the past year and it has made a big difference to me. Mindfulness and meditation are useful tools, but if there is a fundamental belief that you aren’t good enough then all they will ever do is stem the tide.
One of the primary concepts of self compassion is realising that you didn’t ask to be here. You didn’t ask for the circumstances you were born into or the parents, genetic makeup, economic situation, hair colour (etc) that you got. None of that was within your control. And the same goes for everyone else. Armed with that simple truth, it becomes easier to forgive yourself for (at lease some of) the mistakes you make. Yes, it might have been better if you’d done things differently in a given situation, but by focusing compassion on yourself (which isn’t something we’re really ever taught to do, at least not in the mainstream West) you can accept that, in that moment, you were the culmination of all the myriad things that have made you who you are and you might not have acted perfectly but that doesn’t diminish your ability to learn and try again or the fact that you, like everyone else, are an organism that has to find its own way through this (difficult) life carrying a lot of evolutionary, emotional and historical baggage you didn’t actually ask for.
For more on this topic I’d highly recommend The Compassionate Mind by Paul Gilbert (this is the book that really opened my eyes — he avoids the schmalz of a lot of self-help books, and includes a lot of interesting evolutionary science) and Self Compassion by Kristin Neff.
Thank you for this post (and your blog!). I was born with mild Cerebral Palsy, enough to limit my physical activity and give me a limp, also. I’ve gone through so much of what you’ve said here, trying to be like “them” so they wouldn’t notice that I was broken (which turns out they never really did notice anyway).
I’m going through a process of re-discovering my “self” and I’m realizing that I avoided embracing my CP because it’s that ugly truth that you can’t get rid of so you just shove it under a smile (and cute clothes) and hope no one notices. But it’s definitely affected my interactions with others, which has changed me into the person I am today, who I’m not overly happy with.
So thanks to your inspiring post and blog, I’ll be adding “embrace being permanently physically awkward” to my “becoming a better me” goal 🙂
Excellent. I needed this SO badly right now.
Thanks for your post, it is a timely reminder to me to try to stop comparing my life to others, to stop comparing me to some imaginary yardstick of who I should or should not be, to accept my crazy uniqueness, to accept how my life has panned out thus far and to just be happy in me cheers.. xx Josh
I think you’ve made a great point and I would actually agree that a lot of what I’ve said pertains to self-compassion. In order to accept your imperfections, you essentially have to treat yourself with compassion which isn’t always an easy thing to do. As a person who is very hard on herself (made apparent by this article I’m sure) it’s definitely a day-by-day learning process to treat myself with the same compassion I can easily give my friends or family.
Thank you for being so special and learning to love yourself so beautifully. That private time is so reinvigorating
Thank you Megan! I’m so glad my story resonated with you and yours definitely did with me. I avoided embracing my MD for a very long time, and even still do sometimes. I was certainly a much more shutdown and closed off person growing up because of too because I didn’t think anyone could possibly understand the cards I was dealt or my disability so I pushed everyone away so I know exactly what you mean there. I wish there was some magic answer I could provide for learning to accept your CP to make it easier to interact with others (though I’m sure you are a wonderful person and are just being too hard on yourself!). It’s definitely a process and one that took me what seems like forever to learn. You are very welcome for the post and thank you for reading. Here’s to becoming better us’s! 🙂
Thank you Nichole. So glad it helped today!
That’s great! Thank you Josh and cheers 🙂
Thank you for the kind words and for reading Roberta!
When looking for that external validation I miss out on the incredible power in the moment. Then I realize there is nothing I really need to earn validation from!
A simple smile at the world is all that is needed!
Truly a courageous, and inspiring post! Thank you for being vulnerable, and sharing this message through your experience and spiritual journey. Beautiful!!! 🙂
I think we are all guilty of this. I know I am. Sometimes I care what people think about me. And with my job it’s all about people. But I cannot please everyone, and I shouldn’t have to. I should only be pleasing myself and I have not been paying attention to myself. This was a good read and I needed to read this. If anyone has been seeing my comments on this website they might think I am a bit mad. Well I am, but everything that I write is the truth and I truly believe that The Universe is teaching me a lesson about myself. And leading me into the right direction.
Nice Jaclyn,
I always think it is good for people to accept themselves for who they are. Only then can they live a fulfilling life because they do not care what others think about them.
Cheers
That was beautiful. You really reached me with the message in your post.
Hi Tayla. I think not caring what people think is one of the hardest things to do in life! It’s even hard for me to accept that because I’m not perfect, sometimes I’m going to slip and care more about another person’s opinion of me than how I feel about myself. The great thing though is we are all in this together and I think we can all relate to caring about what people think. Thank you for the comment!
Hi Luca. Great point. It isn’t until we really accept who we are that we’ll be able to truly not let the opinions or others affect us or shape the way we behave in life. It never ceases to amaze me how many things can be solved just by accepting oneself!
Thank you Tim! It always makes me so happy to hear when I’ve reached something with my one of my posts.
Hi growthguided. What a great attitude! I definitely hope to smile at the world as much as I can 🙂
Thank you for this wonderfully insightful article, Jackie. I had actually been less concerned about what others thought of me … but more troubled by the harshest critic of all … myself … the perfectionist. Only within the past few years (and I’m 67) have I realized that I am already perfect … yes, a perfect “work in progress”.
I really enjoyed reading this. I’m starting today to accept myself and not let the opinions of others effect me. Away with how they feel about me and I will no longer try to fit in for someone to like me. If they like me they do If they don’t like me they don’t. Thanks for this post
This is an inspiring post that hit home on so many levels… I also have a tendency about thinking twice before clicking a ‘like’ button in fb :P, Thank You so much for sharing!
Read “The gifts of imperfection” by Dr. Brene Brown!
Beautiful post thank you Jackie.
I’m starting to realise the power of my imperfections and how much they can benefit me if I can become vulnerable enough to not worry about the opinions etc of others.
Love to hear and read positive and loving messages like this along my never-ending personal growth Journey.
can i know what date did this article is posted