Life Lessons

I Am Learning to Take up Space

And not be a chameleon that changes colours to fit in

I recently wrote about learning how to regulate my emotions at 30.

However, there’s an aspect I missed.

I had learnt how to become friends with my emotional highs and lows in solitude. But I realized I still went into fight, flight, or fright mode when it came to being vulnerable in front of others (including folks dear to me).

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them, I just didn’t trust myself.

I had little practice of opening up my messy can of worms in front of people and not going into a diarrheal spiel of feeling too much and saying too much and aaaAAAH.

We have all heard stories of people who indulge in toxic whining and then are suddenly left without mates, because ‘boundaries’. I didn’t want to become that person.

Being hyperconscious and afraid of rejection led me to become a chameleon. I became whatever best suited the person in front of me.

Sheri Jacobs puts it aptly in her article “The moment you are feeling like you have to contort yourself to please another, you are walking on eggshells.”

Once we learn how to regulate our emotions — i.e. quickly, and on the back of a paper napkin (kidding), we can move on to being vulnerable in front of the big bad world out there.

Letting others see me

I need to accompany all of me out to public settings, even the parts I claim questionable, declaring my final unabashed acceptance of it all. I need to be the person I love, in front of the people I love.

In case you struggle with this too, I would like to share some of the things that are helping me:

• Work on the parts of yourself you are confident about (come on, there has to be at least one thing)

Only when I was able to garner a measure of peace in my external world did I feel courageous enough to be fully vulnerable. I let myself howl when I knew I had a support system in place in the form of some trustworthy friends, a reliable partner, a good work space. I felt like I had some light in my world and could balance the wounds that the darkness would inevitably bring. I could give myself that grace. Had I opened up those wounds of introspection before then, perhaps it could have gone sideways.

It can be superficial external factors that you find yourself confident about, don’t worry about it. Just double down on it. It can be your glowing skin that you have secretly always been so proud of. So now you slather yourself in ten layers of skincare, and suddenly the world won’t stop gushing about your dewy-glowy looks. You bask in the confidence this gives you. Perhaps you think your personality lacks shine, but at least everyone loves your face!

I know this sounds silly. But when you don’t have an internal confidence radar at all like me — when you are scared of cutting yourself open and showing the world your heart because you figure you aren’t Superman (or Hanumanji), going outside-in can be your salve.

• Attract more positivity into your life, through gratitude** **I almost don’t want to write the G word (Gratitude, not God) due to its heavy glorification everywhere. Not without good reason though.

Anyway, soon you are spending time feeling good about yourself, directing good energy into your life. It is so much easier to be all the good things -brave, benevolent, and open, when you feel positive. This also helps outwardly, as you realize the Negative Nancy’s that surrounded you have started falling away from your life. Their space is now taken up by people who genuinely enjoy you and life.

• The quality of your inner voice changes drastically

As you start tuning into the good and great in your life, you build innate trust within yourself.

I had been giving myself only safe and easy challenges to overcome for a while, so I could use them as stepping stones to bolster my confidence. Now I need to start setting bigger goals.

I can afford to push myself a bit more than what is comfortable because the voice in my head isn’t my mother’s anymore. It isn’t trying to control and correct me at every step. It doesn’t comment on my utility in life if I don’t succeed. Not anymore.

It’s a gentle and encouraging voice that comes from within me, because I know I am capable of so much. It’s even cheerful, even festive. Imagine that!

• You start holding more space for yourself

When you constantly fear rejection, you keep yourself small.

It’s what happened to me. I identified myself as being an ‘inconvenience’ for so long that I would unwittingly take up as little space around folks as possible, fearing I was doing the exact opposite.

I kept myself from applying to the best universities, didn’t fully indulge in my creative expression, and stopped myself from speaking my mind.

I am able to see now that I was playing in the little leagues and short-changing myself all this time.

Now it’s to the point where if I try to word something in a manner even slightly replicating someone else’s journey, it feels almost unsavory in my mouth, and unsavory on paper. Because it isn’t authentically coming from me. My inner voice is holding me to higher standards of production so I can host acceptance for all of me in the present.

There’s enough space for all of us

As you latch on to the gratitude you feel about all you represent, you expand and take up more space around everyone. And there’s everything right with that.

There’s space for a thousand universe’s consciousness in here, you can rest assured you have enough room.

Here is Sheri Jacobs’s brilliantly penned piece on learning to give voice to your truth:

My constant gratitude to Liberty Forrest for providing this hopeful and healing corner on Medium for our souls to rejoice in.

I greatly appreciate your readership. If you enjoyed this story, please click the link here!🧡