Are you different?
Have you always felt different? Perhaps you were/are the quiet one, the overweight one, the one who does not have parents, perhaps your hair or skin is different. Why do we feel we need to confirm to some ideal that some person/society has created?Â
Have you always felt different?Â
Perhaps you were/are the quiet one, the overweight one, the one who does not have parents, perhaps your hair or skin is different. Why do we feel we need to confirm to some ideal that some person/society has created? For those of us who feel different conforming is difficult and following your own path is no picnic either.
Normal
What is “normal” anyway? Because a bigger group is a certain way or does a certain thing? Do we have to be part of this group? If we do confirm that means we are one of a crowd, we blend in. In a group we don’t have to show how awesome we are, how extraordinary. We don’t stand out. We hide.
Why do we do this?Â
We don’t want to be judged or thought of as weird. Let me tell you something, there is nothing wrong with being different or weird. We have to own it. And here is the work for us. We need to figure out what our “weirdness” is and our thoughts about it. I encourage you to find a way to embrace it, find something about it that you genuinely like. You may know you are gay, for example, and embrace that about yourself, but reject the fact that you are overweight. This is where you want to conform and it causes you a lot of pain.
Accept yourself
You get to decide if you want to accept yourself as is or you really want to work on this for yourself. And this is the key, you get to decide either way, not society or “them”. Because if you make the decision it does not matter if someone tries to shame you. In actual fact, it says a lot about the person shaming.
Once you get super comfortable with your differentness (made that one up), you won’t even think about it. When people bring it up, you are almost baffled by what they are saying. You can also set a boundary around it by telling people that you are not up for body shaming or whatever your differentness is. However, if you still feel sensitive about it, it will come up and you will be triggered. This is a good thing as you know what you need to work on.
Think about how things have changed over time. “Normal” 50 years ago and “normal” now, regarding certain things, are very different. Norms differ from country to country, from religion to religion.  Why do we have such drama about being different when “normal” is not even consistent.
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Your version
Why not consider doing what our hearts desire and be who we really are, question all the norms and live your life. There may be some norms that appeal to you or a version of it, your version and you accept that version from a place of acceptance and comfort and not from conformity. A lot of people make mistakes just because they think they have to do something.Â
Get married, have children, get a job, when they would rather just be in a romantic relationship, have some pets and go into business for themselves. It is allowed to have different wants, yet often they are so buried under so much stuff and “shoulds”, we say to ourselves that we don’t know what we want. We don’t know because it does not look like the “normal” version.
Dig deep
You are never going to be happy by doing what you think you should because of what other people want you to do and getting external approval. You have to dig deep and find out what will make you happy and do that, whether it’s “normal” or not. A good question to ask yourself is what would you do if you would be miserable/happy with either choice, which one would you pick?
Life
Choosing to be different or choosing to conform, you are going to have good times and crappy times, this is life, you get to choose which one works for you. You may have made choices that you thought would be good ones, but turn out to not be and now you have to live with the consequences of them. You have the choice to run off to an island and drink margarita’s or you could stay and look after your elderly parents. Neither is wrong and neither is right, you just have to like your reason for your choice.
Be different, be brave, embrace it. What kind of life could you create from this place.
If you are having problems embracing your differentness, email me on hello@lliautism.net and we will explore.
PS Come check out my Day One Program, I help you create the life of your dreams, out of the space of “I don’t know” and into “What’s next?”.Â
Click HERE to learn more.
Have a fabulous week.
A
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