by Ivy from Beautifully Simply You
Not everyone is going to love you. That is a really hard statement to hear. It is especially hard for me to hear, as my entire life I have set out to please others. I wanted to be perfect so badly, so I would do everything in my power to ensure other people liked me. I compromised who I was, just to make sure others around me liked me. In turn, I was liking myself less and less, for the benefit of other people. When I really reflect, I realize my struggle with needing to be liked by others, is why I stayed in the negative relationship I was in for so long. I needed someone to love me, so I latched onto the first person that seemed like they could. I changed who I was and how I acted towards others around me, because I was trying to fit into someone else’s ideal. I didn’t even really know what being Ivy meant. I would ask myself, who am I? And more importantly, I would ask myself, who am I without him? The second question at times seemed unbearable to think about who I would be without this person who I wanted to love me the way I wanted to be loved. Most times, it felt like I was nothing without him, even though I know now that was a lie. I was hiding behind a mask so I could please others, until I finally took the mask off, exhausted from showing up for other people and not for myself, and I shattered it on the floor and began this journey to figure out who I was.
The first few times of doing things that felt right for me and not for anybody else, felt foreign and strange, but also so liberating and simply amazing. With time, patience and growth, you can start to find the love within yourself and for yourself. When you begin to fully embrace self-love and what that means to you, you realize that showing up for you matters, that being who you are, is what adds value to this world and that by being someone else just to please others, takes away from the true beauty you add to the world. Once you learn to love yourself, you can recognize that not everyone is going to love you. The statement still stings, but it stings a bit less. We know that some people are going to think we are weird, or different, and we know that some people may manipulate us into believing that we are not good enough. But those people who put us down, are not our people. These people are here to teach us lessons, to help us to keep growing, and to remember exactly the type of people we don’t want in our circle.
Recently, I received some feedback about me, which I took a bit too personally, which I shouldn’t have, but it is so easy to hone in on the one negative statement someone said about you and completely forget the hundreds of positive ones. It hurt me pretty bad this week and put me in a space where I had spent most of my life, feeling like I was not good enough for anyone. But what self-love has taught me is to be patient with myself. From my self-love experience, I now know myself very well, and I knew that I would feel upset for a day or so but that if I continued my affirmations and continued to surround myself with positive people and seek therapy, I would be able to see the lesson and the blessing in that negative statement that I experienced. I am now using that statement as motivation. In the past, this statement would have immediately shut me down from pursuing my goals, but I know what it is like to live in regret because I was trying to please others. In order to get to where we want to go, we may have people who get upset along the journey, but if it is important to us, if it sets our soul on fire, we must go after our goal, for the sole purpose of doing something for ourselves that feels right.
This week, I remembered that not everyone is going to love me. I read the following quote and really related to it – “You could be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there is still going to be somebody who hates peaches”. Even the products out there with near 5-star reviews, that most of us love, has that one person who does not like that product. Even the most talented person in your field, has someone who criticizes what they say or do. There will always be naysayers. There will always be doubters. There will always be critics. But if we can remember that we are some of the ripest peaches out there, and know how amazing we truly are, we can allow ourselves to acknowledge that it hurts when someone doesn’t think we are that great, but we can remember that there are so many other people out there who think we are more than great, and we need to remember how great we are as well. Let’s remember that not everyone is going to love us, and that is okay. Let’s remind ourselves that self-love is the most important love and it is more important to love ourselves and trust ourselves on this journey than to compromise who we are for someone else. Let’s surround ourselves with people who value our ripeness. My hope for you is that the one person who values the ripe peach you are the most, is you.
Xo,
Be Beautifully Simply You