Tiny Buddha

Tag: nonconformist

  • How I Stopped Worrying About What Others Think of Me

    How I Stopped Worrying About What Others Think of Me

    “Live your life for you not for anyone else. Don’t let the fear of being judged, rejected or disliked stop you from being yourself.” ~Sonya Parker

    On August 4, 2022, I buzzed off my long, thick, luscious hair.

    I marched up Sandy Boulevard in Portland, Oregon, walked into Take Pride Barbershop, and sat in the chair with the most badass barber. She quelled my last-minute fears and boldly took the clippers to my never-shorter-than-shoulder-length hair.

    It was instant liberation.

    I had finally worked up the courage to do so after four years of internal debate and worry, which went something like: What will people think? Will people think I’m a man? Will people treat me differently? What if I’m actually ugly and my ugliness will be revealed? What if my head is oddly shaped? Will I have to wear a bunch of makeup?

    My worries and thoughts were clearly steeped deep in societal conditioning about beauty and femininity. We are told that long hair is feminine and beautiful. We are told that young women aren’t supposed to have short hair. We are told that if you are a woman with short hair, be sure to wear makeup and jewelry so you look feminine.

    But I finally stopped all the thinking, broke free from those norms, and I just did it. I said, “Off with the hair!”

    And now I feel free-er, sexier, and prettier.

    I feel more like me.

    It’s as if I shed layers that were actually hiding my true essence. My true essence as an adventurous, empathic, sensual being who sometimes feels soft and tender, and other times feels bold and badass. My true essence as someone who is wary of rules and authority.

    It’s also as if I shed layers of my ego. Because whether I like to admit it or not, my hair was a significant piece of my identity as a woman. Hair is an expert communicator, with the ability to send so many messages through a single glance. Hair communicates gender, sexuality, wealth, age, health, and parts of our personality.

    Now that I have shed my long hair, I think the only part of me that is still communicated via my hair is my personality. For one can no longer look at me and quickly deduce my gender, sexuality, wealth, age, or health. (I do have very toned muscles and glowing skin, so people should be able to make an assumption about my health, but some people only see the short hair and assume I have cancer).

    What is communicated boldly is that I create and live by my own rules. And if people know one thing about me, THAT is exactly what I want them to know. 

    My buzzed hair also lends an air of mystery, as people wonder about all of those other little check boxes (gender, wealth, age, etc.) that are usually communicated via hair.

    While I did shed some layers of my ego, my buzzed head also makes a pretty strong statement, and in full transparency, I get a lot of attention. This attention comes in all forms.

    Sometimes it’s “Excuse me sir…oh! I mean ma’am.”

    Sometimes it’s “You need to wear lipstick to look more feminine.” (Who said I wanted to look more feminine?!)

    Other times it’s “Omg, you’re so beautiful” or “I LOVE your hair.”

    Sometimes I get free guac.

    I get a lot of smiles from passersby on the sidewalk.

    I get a lot of lingering looks at the post office, the coffee shop, and the dance floor.

    And while I do love to be called beautiful (who doesn’t?!), I don’t attach myself to the praise or the criticism because I have decided for myself that I am strong, radiant, and beautiful, from the inside out. I no longer care if people think I look masculine or feminine, ugly, or beautiful. I don’t care if people in Idaho think I have cancer. I don’t care if people think I look like a skinny boy without makeup on. (What’s wrong with looking like a skinny boy?!)

    This level of not caring, of being so confident in who I am, is the ultimate freedom. 

    Plus, I know that when people react one way or the other, it is not really about me and my hair. Their reaction means that I activated something within them. I activated their desire to be free and to stop following the rules that someone else laid out for them.

    In the best cases, I offer others a little permission slip to step into their own boldness. Which is one of my favorite parts of buzzed life—when women tell me I’ve inspired them to buzz their long hair! That they were so worried about what people would think, but after seeing me do it, they now have the courage too. That is powerful.

    So while the hairstyle of one woman may seem like a simple and insignificant thing, it actually plays a small but important role in the liberation and empowerment of women.

    For when a woman has the courage to push back against beauty standards, that courage is ignited, and she also develops the courage to choose freedom in other facets of her life as well. 

    For me, that has looked like more sexual freedom—making me more playful in bed and bolder in sharing my desires—and more confidence in all areas of my life.

    Buzzing my hair has also created more time in my life, as I spend less time getting ready. It’s created more mental space, as I no longer spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about how to style my hair, when to wash it, and whether or not to get it highlighted.

    It has also freed up more money because I no longer spend hundreds of dollars on highlights and cuts. My fiancé buzzes my hair at home and, occasionally, I bleach it myself.

    It’s also led to freedom in how I dress. Sometimes I like to dress to express my femininity. Other times, I dress to express my masculinity. As someone who used to be deeply insecure about her tomboy-ish-ness and lack of desire to wear makeup, I have reclaimed the masculine parts of me with pride, which has been an integral part of my healing and expansion journey.

    It has also deepened my sensuality. In the shower, the water massages my head more intimately. On a summer day, the sun kisses me deeply. On a breezy morning, the wind and I dance a graceful dance. On the dance floor, the softness of my fiancé’s lips activates my crown chakra. I feel less separation between the world and me. I am more integrated. I am more aware of my oneness with the natural world.

    Yes, all of this because of my buzzed hair!

    So I’ll leave you with a few parting words of wisdom:

    1. People are going to talk and have an opinion about you no matter what, so you might as well do what you want and be who you want.

    2. Others’ opinions of you really have more to do with them than they do with you, so don’t take stuff too personally and concern yourself first and foremost with your opinion of yourself.

    3. If you want to buzz your head, do it. If you don’t like it, it’ll grow back. But I bet you will like it!

    So here’s to taking action to live as a more free, wild, and confident you!

  • I Cheated on Him with My Higher Self (and We’re Still Going Strong)

    I Cheated on Him with My Higher Self (and We’re Still Going Strong)

    “It’s okay to let go of those who couldn’t love you. Those who didn’t know how to. Those who failed to even try. It’s okay to outgrow them, because that means you filled the empty space in you with self-love instead. You’re outgrowing them because you’re growing into you. And that’s more than okay, that’s something to celebrate.” ~Angelica Moone

    “How could you do this to me? It’s obvious you’re with someone else.”

    That was the third and final message I received from my partner of nearly three years, several weeks after we had finally decided to break up. I say “we” because initially it seemed that the decision was mutual, although it would later be revealed that it was me who wanted out.

    He was right, by the way. I had left him for someone else.

    No, not the lover that he had conjured up for me in his own mind. In fact, what had pulled me away was much more powerful and seductive than that. I had cheated on him with my higher self. And she had been trying to win me over for quite some time.

    My higher self: AKA my intuition, AKA my inner badass that will never be ignored. Yep, she’s the one I had left him for.

    Much like when I was nearing the end of my marriage, she had started off with a gentle nudge, a tap on the shoulder every now and again. I’ve noticed throughout my life that if I don’t stop what I’m doing, these attempts to get my attention will become more consistent, until what was once a whisper finally becomes a roar.

    Such was the case three years ago when she decided that I should shave my head. At that point, I had invested a lot of money turning my naturally dark brown hair into a platinum blond mane. This was before the pandemic, when I couldn’t imagine anything coming between me and my monthly visits to the salon.

    As with most suggestions that come from my higher self, my ego was not impressed.

    If the two of them had been sitting across from one another, the conversation would have gone something like . .

    “You want to do whaaaat??”

    “Shave it.”

    “Excuse me?”

    “Take it all off.”

    “All of it?”

    “All. Of. It.”

    So I attempted a compromise by shaving a bit off the side. I knew I was kidding myself when I thought that would be the end, but at least it was a start. Over the course of the next twelve months, I felt equal parts admiration and jealousy whenever I caught a glimpse of someone with a shaved head. This peculiar mix was familiar to me, and it signaled what was destined to happen next.

    When I had finally made the decision, it was a random Tuesday morning, and it made absolutely no sense to my logical mind. Unlike the ego that thrives on being booked and busy, the higher self loves white space. When we give ourselves the opportunity to tune out and tune in, our deepest desires have a funny way of being revealed.

    That fateful day I had decided to take an extra long walk with my dog through one of the parks here in Barcelona. There’s nothing like nature, movement, and a bit of solitude to help you cut through the noise and get to the heart of what you really want. Instead of returning to my apartment, we headed to the salon.

    As I took a seat at my hairdresser’s station and looked at myself in the mirror, my ego had a full-blown tantrum while my higher self popped open the proverbial champagne.

    In those moments of feeling the clippers pass over my scalp, watching my shoulder-length hair fall to the floor, I finally felt free. Whether it’s our hair, our jobs, or a relationship we’ve long outgrown, the higher self seeks our liberation, no matter what the cost.

    That day when I told my then partner what I had done, the conversation didn’t go as I had hoped but exactly like I had imagined.

    “You’re bald.”

    While this was indeed a fact, the tone made it feel like a personal attack. He asked me why someone so beautiful would intentionally make herself so ugly. For once in my life, being “pretty” hadn’t been the deciding factor. I wasn’t so concerned with how I wanted to look but rather how I wanted to feel. As I’ve come to learn since, life really changes when this perspective starts to shift.

    If his thoughts and feelings were any indication, I was no longer much to look at when it came to the male gaze. Ironically, all he could see was “a weirdo” while the person I saw with my own eyes was a queen. 

    While my ex couldn’t get past my shaved head, I couldn’t get over the luminosity and the brilliance that could fully shine through. As he continued to fixate on what I had lost, I knew the truth of what I had gained: freedom, courage, and beauty on my own terms.

    Perhaps I always knew that he would leave me over a haircut. No one likes to think that the future of their relationship comes down to the length of their hair, but he had told me from the beginning that shaving my head was the one thing I should never do. Funny the rules we’ll follow in an attempt to belong to other people while we strategically abandon ourselves.

    I had spent nearly four decades of my life searching for safety in the fulfillment of everyone’s expectations. I used to be an expert at figuring out what they wanted and becoming exactly that. Until one cold, cloudy morning in February 2021, when I decided I was done. Done with the pretending. Done with the pleasing. Done with the denial of what I knew to be true.

    I was finally ready for a different kind of love. And this time it was all my own.

    You could say that I cheated on my ex with my higher self, or maybe she was the one I was meant for all along. Either way, I’ve chosen to be faithful to my inner wisdom. And from what I can tell, we’re still going strong.

  • How I Found My Place in the World When I Felt Beaten Down by Life

    How I Found My Place in the World When I Felt Beaten Down by Life

    “Some people are going to reject you simply because you shine too bright for them. That’s okay. Keep shining.” ~Mandy Hale

    After I finished school, I was excited about moving forward with life.

    I thought about the career that I hoped to have, where I hoped to live, and the things that I wanted to accomplish.

    After starting off as a secondary high school English teacher and becoming disappointed with the ongoing changes in the public school system, I went to graduate school for law. I thought it would open up a lot of possibilities, but it did not.

    I never had any dream of being an attorney in a courtroom. Instead, I always wanted to work in Europe or South America with people from different cultures, nationalities, and backgrounds. I wanted to make a positive difference in a humanitarian way by working with people personally to implement change and improve their lives.

    Life had something different in store for me, though. I ended up being rejected endlessly, well over a thousand times for every application that I sent out over a period of years.

    Disillusionment set in. There was the feeling of “why even continue to try anymore?” As the rejections piled up, friends that I had known for years began leaving as well. Their calls and visits became less frequent. They moved on with their lives, careers, marriages, and kids.

    I felt left behind and rejected not just by jobs, but by life in general. The hurts and betrayals were leading me to lose my passion and enthusiasm. Then there were the callous remarks from friends, people in the local community, when I asked if they knew of a position, former professors who couldn’t assist in any way now that I’d graduated, college career center advisors, and even extended family members.

    It took time, but I finally came to the realization that those who were endlessly rejecting me weren’t the ones who really mattered. I would keep shining brightly with or without them.

    Here are the four things that helped me to finally “reject” the non-acceptance and rejection that I was experiencing from others.

    1. Realize that “there is no box.”

    Our background, degrees, friends, teachers, families, and the larger culture as a whole try to get us to conform to a narrow set of parameters. If you went to school to be a teacher, you have to be a teacher.  If you studied to be an auto mechanic, you have to be an auto mechanic. And you have to live in this place or this country, because that’s where your family have always lived.

    Someone once told me, “there is no box.” Society tries to “box” us in and to restrict us to defining ourselves within certain narrow limits. However, I realized that there really is “no box,” and that I could apply my skills and talents in other ways and in other places.

    I didn’t have to conform to where I was or seek acceptance from those who were currently around me.

    I started meeting new people and looking at other places and countries, and I stopped trying to seek the acceptance of those who had already decided that they weren’t going to accept me for who I was. The employers, institutions, and agencies told me I was  “overqualified” or that that there were “many qualified candidates” and I hadn’t been considered, or they’d keep my resume on file.

    It was as though no matter what I accomplished and no matter how hard I worked, it was never “the right skill set” or “enough” for the particular place or person that I was submitting to.

    In a way, I came to accept their rejection, because I knew that the answer was getting out of my box and realizing that someone else would be more than happy to accept me for who I was.

    2. Let go of the need for approval by others.

    Letting go of the need for approval opens up exciting new doors. We are finally free to be who we really are.

    I wanted to live up to the expectations of family and society. I think that’s why it hurt so much to receive so many rejections over such a long period of time. I wanted to be “successful” according to society’s expectations. I wanted to follow the path of what everyone told me was a “regular” and “secure” life.

    I’ve since realized that I get to define success for myself.

    Success, for me, means doing what I love—teaching, reading, traveling, meeting and working with people from throughout the world, studying languages, and experiencing different cultures.

    Everything changed for me when I decided to live my life on my terms now rather than looking for a company, agency, government institution, or some other entity to provide me with the chance or opportunity. I wasn’t going to wait for permission from someone or something else.

    I also realized I can use my skills in the world outside of the narrow and limited context of the jobs and people who were rejecting me.

    For example, I can teach, and I can work to help others, but it doesn’t have to be within the rigid structure of the public education system.

    I can use the skills that I’ve acquired to be a global citizen and to learn and grow every day without confining myself to the parameters of one place, country, or culture. I can be an amalgamation of all of them, as I continue to grow as a person, both personally and professionally, but on my own terms, not those that are dictated to be by someone or something else.

    As I let go of the need for others to approve of me, my world expanded, because now I could go after those things in life that I was passionate about rather than just trying to conform and satisfy others.

    3. Start journaling.

    Journaling and connecting with our true selves, and what really brings us joy, can make us value ourselves again in spite of any opposition and rejection that we experience from the world.

    It can also help us reconnect with the things we used to love when we were younger—the passions we lost after going through years of school and trying to do what we thought we had to do in order to be successful in the eyes of society.

    Journaling helped me get back to my uniqueness as a person and was what really motivated and inspired me. It helped me pay attention to what made me happy again and those things that I’d really like to do or accomplish.

    I was inspired by my experiences in the world that were outside of my comfort zone and by the rich and varied cultures and experiences that were waiting out there. As I continued journaling, I also realized I’d always been inspired by the possibility of teaching and helping others, but in an international capacity.

    As a result, I’ve had the opportunity to help students with autism, to teach English to students and adults internationally, and to write for a variety of places abroad that did accept and value my work. However, I would never have explored these aspects of myself if I had been accepted by those who were rejecting me. Which means really, their rejections were blessings in disguise.

    4. Support those who support you.

    “Your circle should want to see you win.  Your circle should clap the loudest when you have good news.  If they don’t, get a new circle.” ~Wesley Snipes

    We can reject rejection by supporting those who support us through both the good and the more difficult times in our lives. Why support those who are only there for you when life is good?

    The hard times made me realize who really was on my side. The people who stayed with me and continued to believe in me supported me through both the victories and the disappointments. There was a tremendous difference between those individuals and others who no longer answered calls or emails, except when I was “successful.”

    Now, I may not have as many friends as I once did, but those that I do have are an important part of my circle and people that I can rely on.

    Someone once told me, “Now I know who the true believers are.” I feel that way about those who have proudly celebrated my successes and have also been there for me during my darkest moments.

    I hope you’re fortunate enough to have people in your life who genuinely support you, even if it’s only one person. If you don’t, try to open yourself up to new people, and stop giving your energy to people who accept you conditionally or regularly disappoint you. Creating a supportive circle begins with that first step of making a little room.

    —

    It wasn’t easy for me to overcome rejection and non-acceptance, and I still struggle with it at times. No one wants to feel left out or like a failure. But I’ve realized I can only fail by society’s terms if I accept them—and I don’t.

    Instead, I’ve rejected the “box” other people tried to impose on me, gotten outside my comfort zone, let go of the need for approval, started rediscovering what excites me, and shifted my focus to those people who have always supported me, regardless of what I’ve achieved. And I’m far happier for it.