Why I don't need your permission to be me - the art of not caring what people think of you

 

If someone asked me, "do you care what people think about you?" I would answer with an affirming no. Of course, this isn't 100% the truth - I would hate for my boyfriend or my parents or anyone else I care about to think that I'm a terrible person, but most of the time I really don't care what people think or have to say about me.

Now, in the past what people thought of me mattered more than anything - far more than what I even  thought about myself. I spent years trying to change people's minds about me, trying to portray an image of someone so far removed from the person they thought I was, and trying to make them like me. I wanted nothing more than the approval of people, who I really didn't even care that much for, but for some reason their opinion of me was so important. The worst thing is is that I perhaps put more energy into getting the approval of people who were actually quite nasty to me, than I did actually showing up for the people who really cared about me.

At one point however, I realised that I could probably spend the rest of my life trying to change the image that people had of me, or trying to make people like me, but it still wouldn't work. They may always have this image of me in their heads of a person that they didn't like, and I could never change that. My whole perception completely changed one day, when I read something that made me realise I never should have cared what people think of me - 

"The person you think of as yourself exists only for you, and even you don't really know who that is. Every person you meet, have a relationship with or make eye contact on the street with, creates a version of you in their heads. You're not the same person to your mum, your dad, your siblings, than you are to your co-workers, your neighbours or your friends. There are a thousand different versions of yourself out there, in people's minds. A you exists in each version, and yet your you, yourself, isn't really a someone at all."

So everyone has a different perception of you, but how can there be so many different versions of you when there is only one you? The truth is, is that you will never be able to successfully showcase the person you actually are to everyone. Not everyone is going to get you or see the real you. No matter where we go, what we do or who we meet, there will always be someone there creating a different version of you in their head, and it's never going to be the person you actually are.

So, if we can't showcase the person we actually are, people don't even really know us to judge us. When people look at you and judge you, they are only judging a version of you that they have created, not the real you. 

That is a problem in their mind, not yours. I will discuss in later posts about projection, but in short we project ourselves onto other people. We often judge people, based on our own strengths or shortcomings. For an example, the reason you might idolise a celebrity is because you relate to them and you're actually projecting your best features on to them, but instead of idolising yourself, you're idolising them. When we judge others, we are often judging them on behaviour or traits that we have suppressed in ourselves. When people judge you, they are judging the version of you that they have created in their own mind, which is often riddled with their own bad traits.

I spoke in one of my earlier posts about how, in the Spiritual sense, we are only ever one thing and that is consciousness. Everything about us as people is changeable, that's why we can never give ourselves labels and expect for them to define us. This works with other people too - how can people label us as something, when we are constantly changing? We are not stagnant beings and the only thing we ever will be is consciousness. The version of you that lives in someone else's head can be outdated and stagnant, while you are ever changing.

I look at people from my past and while I used to worry that they might have an outdated version of me in their heads, I now realise it's not my job to care. I could meet them now and they would create a new perception of me. I could then change tenfold and in a year's time they would once again have an outdated version of me in their head.

So, if we can never really perceive who we are, and if we are always changing and don't even know who we really are anyway, why should we actually care about the thousands of different versions of us that exist in the minds of others? How would we possibly control all those versions and if we could control them, how could we keep them up-to-date with who we are at each stage in our lives?

One of the things that I realised that also helped me to stop caring what people think as well is that people are much more judgemental toward themselves than they are toward you. I used to sit in a busy restaurant constantly worried that people were looking at me or judging me, unaware of the fact that most human beings were also worried that people were looking at or judging them. 

Now my statement of the day is "why I don't need your permission to be me" and I want to talk more about that. Often, when we display our genuine selves, we are not always well-received. For example, let's say that you wear your favourite dress and you take a photo that you later post on Instagram, but it doesn't get a lot of engagement. You might feel that although you are showcasing your genuine self and you feel good for doing that, others don't receive you so well.

The problem is that, as previously discussed, you can never fully showcase your genuine self, and people might not like that it's different to the perception of you that they have created. I found from my own experience this to be true. I always used to dress comfortably and not care too much about what I was wearing. I wasn't comfortable in this, so one day, I decided that I was going to dress how I wanted to and express my own personality. In doing this, I found that people treated me differently. This was because when I was being myself, I was challenging the version of me that they created in their heads. They maybe saw that I wasn't being myself because their idea of who I was, was different to who I actually am.

People will also try to dampen down your personality too, if it doesn't fit in with their idea of who they think you are. In the book Good Vibes, Good Life there is a quote that I absolutely live by - 

"When you're making noise, someone will try to turn down your volume. When you're shining bright, someone will try to dim your light. It's simple: if you weren't standing out from the rest, people would have no reason to hate."

When I started to become more self-confident, I found that people wanted to tear me down. I knew that it was because I was challenging their belief of who I was and people don't like their beliefs being threatened. In believing in myself and being myself, I was no longer conforming to their idea of who I was. Instead, I was flourishing as my own person with no regard to their perception of me.

I don't need permission to be me - I don't need approval of the person that I genuinely am, because no one else will ever understand it. I don't even fully understand who I am sometimes, so how can anyone else?