Could trashing your image be a good thing?

I work with people who, often unknowingly, spend nearly all of their energy trying to live up to someone else’s image of who they ought to be.

There are two primary outcomes: failure and resentment.

Going against your true self to be what someone else wants is monumentally challenging and rarely successful. If you do manage to achieve the false image, in time the ache of your truth and opportunities lost, will breed resentment of whomever is trying to get you to be what they want.

Blaming, as always, is misplaced. You are ultimately responsible for your decisions. Trying to live up to someone else’s expectations is a decision.*

It is never too late to decide to honor yourself and to make that choice lovingly. There is no need to angrily inform anyone of your decision to be you.

Your new work is to stop choosing a keeper. You’ll know you’re succeeding when the statement below inspires no fist-pumping exhilaration, or fear. When reading this feels like reading your name, you’re living your life:

What you think

of me

is none of my business.

~ Cynthia

*Children are exempt here as their real or perceived survival depends on the people who care for them (a note for us parents – let your children be who they are).