The Freedom of Finally Being Yourself When Everyone Else Is Telling You Who to Be
Somewhere along the way, I realized I had spent much of my life listening to everyone except myself.
Parents. Teachers. Friends. Husbands. Society.
Everyone seemed to have an opinion about how life should be lived and how I should fit in.
What surprised me was not that I listened. That was expected. It was that I listened for so long.
Like many women of my generation, I grew up believing that being a good person meant keeping the peace, meeting expectations, and avoiding disappointment.
We learned to be agreeable. Responsible. Thoughtful of others. To smile and be happy, no matter how we felt inside.
Those are not bad qualities.
But somewhere along the way, many of us also learned to ignore ourselves.
We stopped listening to that quiet inner voice that knew when something did not feel right. The voice that whispered that a choice was not really ours, that it wasn’t who we truly were. The voice that wondered whether we were living from our hearts or from everyone else’s expectations.
The First Time I Chose My Own Path
I remember learning that lesson early.
In high school, I loved art and design and dreamed of becoming an engineer. My school offered mechanical drafting classes, but girls were not allowed to take them. I was told those classes were reserved for boys because they would be the ones expected to earn a living someday.
Instead, I was steered toward home economics, which I disliked from the very first day.
But something inside me refused to accept that answer.
I complained to counselors, the principal, and anyone else who would listen. Eventually, the issue made its way to the school board. The following year, the rules changed, and I became the first girl allowed to take drafting.
I loved it. I excelled at it.
Years later, when I entered engineering classes in college, I was often the only woman in the room.
Sadly, I understood why.
For a long time, I thought that experience was about drafting. Looking back, I think it was really about learning how easy it is to lose yourself when everyone around you is telling you who you are supposed to be.
For years, I did exactly that.
The Freedom That Arrives with Age
And then, somewhere in my 60s, something began to change.
I started to realize that every bit of energy I spent worrying about what other people thought was energy I could have spent creating a life that felt authentic to me.
At this stage of life, I have learned that energy is far too precious to waste.
In finding that freedom, I no longer feel the need to explain every decision about my life, my work, my finances, or how I spend my days.
I do not need everyone to understand my choices. I only need to understand them.
I do not need approval for the things that bring me joy. I only need to know that they genuinely bring joy to me.
That does not mean I have become selfish. It does not mean I have stopped caring about others. In fact, life feels more precious these days, and caring runs deeper.
It simply means I have learned there is a difference between true kindness and self-abandonment.
One comes from generosity.
The other from fear.
As the years have passed and life has slowed, I have realized that most people are thinking far less about me than I once imagined. They are busy worrying about their own lives, their own problems, and yes, what other people think of them.
There is something wonderfully freeing about that realization.
Learning to Trust Myself
These days when I am making a decision, I find myself asking a very different question.
No longer, “What will people think?”
But simply, “Does this feel right to me? How does it feel in my gut? What is my own heart telling me?”
These days, a quiet afternoon with Buddy and Leo feels more meaningful to me than trying to impress anyone.
That question has guided many of my choices in recent years. Instead of building my business around what I thought I should be doing, I have found myself rebuilding Dancing Dingo around what feels meaningful to me. I have chosen a quieter life, one with less striving and more purpose. Some opportunities I have said yes to. Others I have quietly declined because they no longer felt like mine.
For perhaps the first time in my life, I have become more interested in following my own instincts than in meeting someone else’s expectations.
That small shift has changed me more than I ever expected.
Life feels quieter. Simpler. More honest. More spiritual. More genuinely me.
Oddly enough, it has also made me more giving, more compassionate, more expressive, and less inhibited. When you stop spending so much energy trying to be who others expect you to be, you have more energy left to simply be yourself.
And perhaps that is one of the greatest and most unexpected gifts of growing older.
We begin to understand that we have earned the right to be ourselves – unapologetic, whole, and infinitely more joyful.
After all, if we are lucky, we spend decades learning who we are. It seems a shame to spend the rest of our lives asking permission to be that person.
What Do You Think:
Have you found it easier to be yourself as you’ve grown older? What is one decision you’ve made recently because it felt right to you, regardless of what others might think?
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