Figure out how to be your most authentic self

Ok this is my 40-year-old-recovering-people-pleaser ramble on how to stop caring about what people think of you... Do what you will with this information!!!! Is this wisdom or delusion? Who cares! Also I'm still absolutely learning how to do this and am far from being an expert...

It might sound cliché, but once you learn to embrace your true self (let that freak flag fly!) and figure out your core values, it's much easier to care less what others think of you. It's worth asking yourself: are others even thinking those things, or are these just stories you're telling yourself? Why waste energy worrying about how everyone else is perceiving us? It's exhausting, and we will never win. 

Something I've been practising this year is not responding to indirect communication. I’m autistic, so I have always struggled with people who speak in riddles and don’t say what they mean (which I know can be challenging for many of us, particularly certain groups of people due to the way we have been socialised to apologise for taking up space). I also encourage the people I love to do the same. 

If I sense someone is annoyed or angry, I will ask them directly if they want to talk about it. If they say they don't, rather than ruminating on it and assuming it's all my fault or that there’s something wrong with me, I now practise accepting what they've said at face value, then wait for them to come to me if/when they're ready to talk about it. I used to expend so much energy dwelling on what I'd done wrong or how to fix it immediately because anything felt better than sitting in the discomfort of the unknown. Maybe it actually has nothing to do with me.

Another thing I’ve been practising this year is relinquishing the desire to control the narrative - let people misunderstand you! Let people judge you or even hate you! I'm def NOT saying use the "let them" theory because I believe that's reductive, toxic and individualistic. But there's a point at which we can get so preoccupied with how we're perceived or understood (classic struggle of a neurodivergent brain), we end up wasting precious energy convincing people of our worth. We don’t need to convince people of our worth; we are already worthy!!!

It feels liberating once you practice letting go of that need to be liked or understood by everyone. It frees up precious space in your life for the right people to find you - the ones who will see you and understand you. We assume so much because - if you're like me - we tend to experience severe discomfort in silence - so instead of sitting in that discomfort, we try to fill in the gaps in communication with our own made-up stories. Chances are, people aren't thinking about you as much as you're thinking about you. Sometimes it's just not that deep! 

Creating assumptions or false narratives based on social media is a classic example of this - it's so easy to piece together a story in your head based on a few tiny curated snippets from someone's social media, but how about having an actual irl conversation to find out what's actually happening in each other's lives? Groundbreaking.

Anyway, if you made it this far, congratulations and thank you for indulging me!!!