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There is this notion floating around women, that in order to be the ideal woman or even a good woman, we need to please everyone. Everyone has to either like you and/or like what you have to offer. We grew up being fed the notion we need to always be likable, not to rock the boat, and that being sweet keeps the peace. While there are and have been challenges to those qualities, this idea of the woman needing to be for everyone is still rooted within society.
Growing up I was no exception to this ideology. In fact growing up in a very patriarchal centered religion, it felt like I was overloaded with very traditional, conservative views on how a woman should behave in order to please everyone. So many times I betrayed my own self to appease the nature of the patriarchy, almost breaking my free-spirited nature. To this day I can still close my eyes and visually see parts of me being shoved into boxes trying to silence myself and trying to make myself SMALLER to better fit into these ideologies. Ultimately these belief patterns did not serve me and consequently, dimmed my brightness.
Letting go of this idea which is deeply ingrained within me, that I am meant for everyone has not been an easy journey. I say journey because this was not and is not a simple fix. There were and still are struggles and challenges to learn from and deconstruct on the daily.
One thing I am finding out on this journey is that I am not meant for everyone and that is more than OK because not everyone is meant for me. We need variety in our lives, we need people and ideas challenging us; however, we do not need to keep these people or ideas in our life’s narrative. We can and should reflect on what they brought to us, but ultimately we have the power to let them go if they do not serve us or our needs.
Deconstructing the notion that I am meant for everyone has given me a sense I am reclaiming my inner strength. Instead of focusing on this false narrative of needing to please everyone I am focusing on what my strengths are and how I can use those strengths to achieve what I desire out of this life.
A few months ago I was having a conversation with my mother and she, being the woman she is, was beating herself up about something not going right at work and her not being capable for the simple tasks she has and so on… it was very self-defeatist talk and I finally said to her, “Mom, you need to stop,” and as the conversation evolved I began explaining to her my epiphany, that “I am a mermaid living in the jungle and if I want to thrive as myself I need to live in the ocean.” Obviously, my mother questioned this metaphor because who uses a mermaid living in a jungle as an example? Well, I do. Let me explain;
Over the past few years I have been working towards attaining my teacher certification while simultaneously working on my masters in education. I am very proud to say I have achieved both. The comical downside to this is that I realized after about three years of teaching, I am not suited to be a teacher, nor do I really want to be one… but the entirety of that story is for another time.
And yes, I do say comical, because I am coming to understand I am the type of person who likes to learn from the detours of life. It was through teaching where I was able to begin to recognize and understand what my strengths are and what challenges me for the first time without someone else telling me what I was good at and what I “needed to improve.” I also challenged myself to think about what I really wanted in life and if what I currently was doing aligned with what I wanted.
However, teaching sucked the entire life force from my mind and body and the amount of energy I was giving to this profession was not at all what I wanted for myself, because there was nothing left for me. I knew something needed to change.
I began to realize that while I was decent at what I was doing, I was living for everyone else’s expectations of me. This idea of having to please everyone just became so exhausting, making it impossible to shine as the person I am and that is when it hit me, what I wanted to do, what I wanted to gain back was my shimmer.
I started to examine when and what it felt like for me to shine, what it felt like to glow. I began to reflect on times and moments throughout my life where I could remember feeling like I was shining. If I could put “glowing me” in a percentage zone I would say, I could remember really shining about 35% of the time throughout my life. Now depending on who you are that could be high or that could be low, for me it’s a very low percentage. I want to shine at least 75%-85% of the time because let us be honest, I also need to build in some self-care time for this little introvert. Now in order to shine at the capacity I truly want to shine at, one thing I need to do is stop holding myself to everyone else’s expectations and standards of how I should be living.
Remember when I compared myself to a mermaid living in a jungle earlier, well this mermaid is making her way to the sea.
Letting go of the notion you are meant for everyone is not easy, but it is a necessary step in finding those you are meant to inspire. Because you, as a woman, are meant to inspire other individuals by showing up in the world as who you are, by living fearlessly and unapologetically as yourself. Do not fall into the trap that you are meant to live and appeal to the tastes of everyone, you are not. When you live true to who you are, you will inspire those individuals you are meant to inspire.
About the Author
Jessica Bryant is just a midwestern girl, home grown in Illinois, currently residing in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is driven to create, with create being a very broad term, as she find joy in various creative outlets. Pet mama to some adorable fluff monsters.