Why Are You Trying to Impress Everyone? Be Who You Are.

In my work helping people understand how to be calmer and more purposeful there is one hurdle almost everyone faces; worrying about how they will be perceived by others.  I don’t speak too brashly on many occasions but in regards to this point why the hell do you care at all what anyone else thinks about you?

Don’t worry, it’s not just you.  The majority of the world spends their days concerned about how they are perceived.  Advertisers know you do; in fact it is their main hook to get you buy things, so you are perceived as happy, wealthy, sexy, etc.

Well, the time has come to stop mincing words.  Stop pissing away your happiness trying to please other people, to appear to be something you think others want to see in you. 

If you want to know something even funnier, you are trying to impress the entire world without realizing everyone else is trying to do the same thing.  Everyone is trying to appear be the perfect worker, husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend without realizing that no one is looking at you.  Everyone is so tied up in trying to be something they are not that they aren’t even aware of what you are doing.

Let’s break this down.  You worry about what others think of you so you don’t do some things you want to do, don’t wear something you want to wear or think something that you want to think.  You are trying to appease other people…who are so self-absorbed that they are doing the same thing not even aware that you are doing anything.

So you live unhappily trying to impress others who don’t even think outside of who they are.  That is crazy!

Stop caring about what other people think of you.  It is not important.  A wise woman told me,

“The only opinion of you that counts is your own.”

Those are sage words indeed. 

I’ll tone it down now but the point is a good one.  There is no one you need to be, but you.  Who you are is amazing.  The people who can see outside themselves know it too.  People see you, the authentic you, and smile.

When you drop pretense and the desire to please others you become liberated.  You live fuller, happier and calmer.  Your life is short, why would you deny yourself things that make you happy simply to please others?

Be respectful of yourself and others and you will be all set.  If you want to climb a tree then climb a tree.  Don’t worry thinking that adults don’t do those things or people will think you are strange.  If it isn’t going to hurt anyone else then simply say to yourself,

“I don’t give a (expletive) I am going to do it”

As Mark Twain so aptly put it,

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.”

So go live your life…YOUR life.