When you reject who you really are for an image you think you have to fit, you risk the relationship you have with others and the relationship you have with yourself.
All these niggas ever really talk about is money
I think all these niggas got to talk about is money
His mans locked up he can't bond em out it's funny
God forbid they chalk em out and find out it's no money
Damn
I wrote a piece recently about the dangers of painting a picture of other people. In short, when you decide to hold people to an image you created of them, you will find yourself frustrated and disappointed once that image reveals itself to be inaccurate. Painting pictures of other people before you allow them to show you who they are sets up relationships for failure.
But there is another danger, dear reader, that is just as hazardous. When you paint a picture of yourself that is unrealistic and unreflective of who you are, it is the relationship with yourself at stake. Painting pictures of yourself that do not accommodate who you really are sets up your self-image for disaster.
Self-development is in itself, noble, natural, and necessary. It is the pursuit to become a better version of yourself. It is the humility to say "I could be better/stronger/faster in this particular area." and the wisdom to say "I'm going to do XYZ to accomplish that improvement." Self-development comes from a place of self-love, self-awareness, and a healthy imagination of what life could be.
Self-betrayal is in itself, harmful, nuanced, and sneaky. It is the rejection of who you are as a person in pursuit of becoming an entirely different person altogether. Perhaps even in the interest of achieving a goal, this becomes twisted in self-betrayal because this pursuit comes from a place of negative emotions and thoughts of yourself. It is the dangerous fear that to achieve your goal, you have to reject yourself instead of just bringing who you are to the goal you seek.
Self-betrayal (rejecting yourself for someone/something you're not), unrelenting standards (pinning yourself to ridiculously high expectations), and misalignment with what you actually want for your life (pretending to be one thing but knowing for a fact that you want to be something else) all come from, and lead to, places of pain, stress, and heartache.
Growth and self-development require the ability to imagine who you want to be and the discipline to work toward becoming that person. This is healthy and, dare I say, necessary in our lives.
What growth and self-development also require, however, is self-awareness and a strong enough sense of self to root those efforts in your own truth and reality.
Growth and self-development are not excuses to pretend to be someone you're not. Going beyond who you really are for the sake of personal improvement is fine and safe when it is still aligned with who you are as a person.
For example, I've recently been feeling particularly out of control when it comes to my time. I'm very interested in growing in the area of time management because I am confident stretching myself to strengthen that skill will pay off for me in the future. This is fine, not because I'm already a timely person or a morning girly, but at the core of who I am, I'm interested in making the most of my days and using my time wisely. Engaging in self-development to actually see that interest materialize in my life and become good at time management will certainly require stretching beyond who I am at this moment, adopting new habits, and changing how I move throughout my day. But I am in no way rejecting who I am fundamentally as a person to accommodate for that.
Where it becomes dangerous is the space where you start forcing yourself to fit an image that is unnatural to you and ultimately unhelpful to you for no other reason than to say you fit the image. Just as not holding other people to paintings you create of them gives them more space to change and grow, it works the exact same way for you.
When we give ourselves the space to breathe, change, seek, create, and grow organically and not according to an image that doesn't fit who we are or who we actually want to be, then we're able to be more gentle and kind to ourselves. Gentleness and kindness are not mutually exclusive to discipline. Discipline is a form of self-care. Contortion is a form of inauthenticity with yourself and others.
For example, when I was in grad school, the act of pursuing that degree alone was an effort to stretch beyond myself for the greater good. I gained mental, spiritual, and emotional fortitude in that experience. I learned how to lean on and engage my community when I'm in need. I also learned firsthand the danger of self-betrayal.
The stretch for the sake of personal development was objectively this degree would aid me professionally, despite the fact that I didn't want to be there. The stretch to become what I thought was the "ideal" graduate student and force myself into habits, behaviors, and patterns that very fundamentally contradicted who I was, what I was interested in, and how I wanted to spend my time was a disastrous move. It was only after I realigned with myself, checking in to ensure that my daily experience was approached as me, Thalia, the person. Not Thalia the perfect graduate student that I felt I had to be and pressed myself to be, when in reality, not only was that contradictory to who I was, but it was actively damaging my mental health and my performance in class.
What did I do to solve it? I had to bffr. I said "Girl, please stop playing with me right now. This is not who you are." I checked back in with me and grounded myself in my own reality and my own body and focused on how I could improve myself to make it through that experience. I did not focus on how I could reject what I knew about myself and my needs for the sake of becoming the person I thought I needed to be.
Put the paintbrush down, my dear. If you want to grow as a person and develop skills, traits, and abilities, by all means, my friend, please do! But when it is at the risk of who you are, if you find yourself getting lost in your pursuit of development, I implore you to consider what the intention behind all of it is to begin with. Becoming a better you is always the goal, but rejecting who you are to become an entirely different person stifles so much of who you were meant to be and the light you specifically weren’t meant to shine.
Thalia just wants to do right, live a full life, and give herself enough space to grow into the woman she was meant to be.
