Embracing Your Soul
It’s so easy to get caught up in the outside world with everything being so in your face all the time. We are constantly bombarded with other people’s opinions, likes, dislikes, how they dress, what they eat, what they do and what they think… With all that noise it can confuse us from what we like, don’t like and who we are. We are constantly being told, literally and subconsciously how we should feel about things and that is only pulling us further away from being true to our own self.
Ask yourself this, when was the last time you decided to check in with the internet to see their views on something that just happened before formulating your own opinion? What would it mean if your opinion was not in accordance with the “popular” opinion? Here is where it can become dangerous, when the voices online become louder than your own and the people you watch/ follow start to blur with your own identity.
It first starts innocently, like “oh I love that top that person is wearing” and you go and buy it, it then starts to expand more, so and so said this is good so I’m going to do that. Eventually your actions are no longer your actions, and your thoughts are no longer yours. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely a place in which we need to learn and share from one another because it can help us expand in certain areas in our life and may add value to something that we could benefit from. The problem is when that outside noise becomes our everything and we lose ourselves in being able to differentiate who we truly are and what we truly believe in from others.
There are many times in which I experienced this in different phases of my life and felt so out of alignment with my soul because I wasn’t actually listening to what was right for me. I was always listening to others in how I “should” be and how me being me was not up to human standard. My likes and dislikes, my way of living was not acceptable. What does that even mean? I really don’t know, but what I can say is that because of all that chatter I started to act and force myself to be something that wasn’t me. As you might guess, it made me unhappy.
I started questioning everything. If the way I’m living right now is what everyone else told me to do because it was the “better/right” way to live then, why don’t I feel good? I had to seriously ask myself was I living for me or for someone else. The answer was really simple, me. Trying to conform into other people’s values in what they believed to be the best way of living was not my best way of living and me trying to fit into that only made me unhappy thus unable to be the best version of myself for myself and others. All I was doing was furthering away from my soul and furthering away from what they all preached to be the result of living their way, which was a better version of yourself. I was not going to ever become the best version of me by not being me. It’s so easy to just tell someone to “just be you”, especially now with opinions thrown at you from 100 different directions. Its sadly a “brave” thing to do because if you being you is not in alignment with the popular opinion then you’re shamed for it.
In a world where we say, “freedom of speech” and preach embracing yourself, most of the time it’s not welcomed, so we either shut off or become something were not.
My challenge to you is to sit down with a pen and paper and write out three things you do, think, eat, dress… whatever it may be and write how you actually feel about those things. Write why you feel that way and then if it’s because someone else said so then really question that and formulate your own thoughts on it. Start practicing this daily and learn more about yourself through the process. Start to strip away the parts of you that you borrowed from others and shine a light on the parts of you that you hid away. It takes a lot of self-reflection and self-awareness to be true to ourselves because sometimes we can even mistake our true selves from being overshadowed by our own fears, traumas and egos. Just always make sure that at the end of the day if what you’re doing brings your soul happiness and is in good intention then that’s all that matters. Embrace you for being you and for being the unique self you are because who you are deserves to be celebrated and loved by you.
