The woman, the man or the myth?

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that most of us have experienced this moment in our lives: where we question who the heck we are and what the heck is going on. I’m pretty sure most of us might stumble upon these thoughts daily. I certainly do. A lot. But if I am being fair, it’s to a much lesser degree than when I was younger and still felt the need to prove something to the world. This is not a rant about how to find yourself or what’s your life purpose. If I had those answers, I’d no longer be a seeker and I cannot even begin to imagine what that life is like. But this is a different memo from those existential thoughts, one that I think we can all relate to.  

How often is the person you are currently being a version of yourself that is trying to fulfill other people’s ideals of you? How often are you fitting into a mold you think the world want you to be? How often are you being the myth of yourself and not your actual true self?  

I’ll give you an example…I used to date someone who really needed a polished “looks good on paper” type of partner and I very quickly, unbeknownst to myself at the time, became a much more polished version of myself. I lost a lot of my free spirit when I was around him because I was trying to fit inside a box he had neatly painted for me. I was living the myth of myself. The narrative was decided for me and I chose to live up to it, rather than set the record straight and correct my story. My myth those years became, Jamieson, the woman who looks good on paper and schmoozer of the academia world.

A friend of mine put it brilliantly, as “sending in the representative”. And we all do that, especially in work situations or with acquaintances or non-close friends. We send in our pretty, smiley versions of ourselves to portray what the world expects of us. Let’s be fair about this- to an extent this is a rational and expected part of society. We do have roles that we have to play in order to make our lives function. But to what end?

Now as nonjudgmental as we all strive to be (or not, do you), we are also always sizing up humans. The second we meet them, we are assessing their clothes, the way they style their hair, their mannerisms, their choice of words, their interactions with others, their body language- all of it. We take in that information and then imprint our version of them into our brain. Now the scary part is, is that we then take these preconceived notions and create stories in our head about who they are and what we can/should expect from them. Sometimes we go even further and use our imprint to manipulate them into the version we want them to be. And all of this is happening in our subconscious. Eeks.

A loved one once told me a story about his experience in high school and college that illuminates this. His whole life he was an athlete and he was very good at that role. He was also on the quieter side and more reserved than his louder teammates. Because he was good at sports combined with the shy factor, he felt like people always put him in the stupid category. Brawn, not brain. And rather than defending his intelligence (because he is super intelligent) he gave up on being good at school and focused on what gave him his accolades, sports, and played right into the role that society had created for him. He spent more than half his life being the myth of himself. And that athlete turned frat boy mentality probably still haunts his subconscious and plays into his daily choices. We are all constantly fighting against what IS expected of us and how we NEED to appear in the world rather than fighting for the space to be our beautiful authentic selves.

The moral of the story is to not self-abandon. You do not have to be any version of yourself, except for the one that you need to be able to sleep with at night.  You need to shake off the belief that you are in this world to fit right in. You are in this world to connect and evolve through love- that is it. You are not here to be the myth of yourself. You are not here to play into people’s idealizations of you. You are not here to be a cookie cutter version of yourself. You are not here to follow the social norms that imprison your spirit.

You also are not here to fulfill the BS stories you are creating for yourself internally. Stop telling yourself you are not worthy. Stop saying you are not smart enough. Stop saying you are not good enough. Stop saying you need more of this and less of that. Stop saying you are not lovable. Stop saying you are alone and no one shows up for you. Stop criticizing your body. Stop saying you’re an asshole or a jerk or a bad person or whatever your inner critic has decided to drop at your door today. Stop telling yourself you won’t be successful. Stop all these freakin’ lies you are telling yourself. These lies feed into the representative you are sending out into the world. You are not here to live in that version of yourself!

You are HERE on this beautiful planet to be inexplicably, unapologetically, your magical self. The universe wants nothing else but that from you. So, if you feel like you are living the legendary version of yourself- stop right this minute.

You have a choice to change who you are at this very moment. You have a choice to be a better you. You have a choice to listen to the voice inside your head that says “you know the answer” and follow that guidance. You are not beholden to anyone else’s design for you. It is certainly not easy and it certainly requires a good amount of vulnerability and a shit ton of courage but I promise you, the day you decide to just say “fuck it, this is me!” is the day that you begin to really live. This is your call to the other side. This is the moment the game changes. So who are you going to be?

Authentically yours,

Jamiesonxo