Everyone is a Critic

The world itself is already a pretty scary place. But when you have to add in the age old fear of people liking you, it seems 10 times worse.  Those feelings of self doubt that you weren’t even aware you still had, slowly creep up from your gut and nestle into the crevices of your brain.

I am a person, like every other person, who would just like to get along with everyone. To some people that might sound like I’m a very likable person with few conflicts in life. Although I would like to say I am a likable person the latter part of the previous sentence is not true.

It seems every person I am closest with, I have had some sort of argument with. These circumstances I find to be helpful in the growing process of a healthy friendship and relationship. The friends that I have are like family to me. That statement wouldn’t be true to me if we couldn’t be honest with each other. Even though I have argued with my loved ones, every one of them would describe me as an optimist. To me, that means everything because they have seen the ugliest sides of me and can still look at me and see me as beautiful. These are the people I hold dearest to my heart.

Now, where my heart conflicts, there are also people that you want to like you because you like them. I adore my boyfriend’s family even when they irritate me. But that is also part of who I am. Thanks to my amazing parents, I was taught that you try your hardest to accept people, even on their worst days. If you don’t get along one day, there is always tomorrow and it always starts fresh. Part of who they are (or so it seems to me) is that if you aren’t part of their family, your worst days are usually what is remembered. They are the only people I know (not to be conceited) that don’t like me for no real reason. They have their reasons but none of them seem to be any real reason to dislike a person so much.  What amazes me is that their son (my boyfriend) is one of the most loving people that I know. He accepts everyone just how they are and accepts the roles that they play in his life. He doesn’t pretend to be someone he is not; I know every “ugly” side there is to him and vice versa.

I struggle to try to be a better person every day that I can..what I struggle with is this: When should we take to heart people’s criticisms of our worst selves and make changes and when do we just say, screw it. I love who I am? When do we start to become our own best critic instead of our worst?

 

The Joys (or Pains) of Being in my Twenties

Most of my life I have felt that I need to find a certain path, or the “right” path. I admire the people around me that know what they love and have careers in it. I grew up with parents that had goals in life and kept moving until they hit those goals, and then proceeded to make new ones.

So it’s probably no wonder, that at the age of twenty-five, with no discernable life goal or career path, that I feel a little lost. I struggle daily trying to find what is right for me. I immediately went into cosmetology school after high school and proceeded to have jobs in salons. I thought that this would be my career for a lifetime.

After a few years in a salon environment I came to find out that the catty atmosphere was overriding any joy I had in being a hair designer. I then proceeded to try out going back to college because I felt that I needed to do something….even though I still wasn’t sure what.

I recently made a mistake when it came to my schooling and I felt so ashamed at the end result that I didnt even fight for what I wanted. Anyone who knows me as a person, knows that I don’t like to take things lying down. This came to make me feel even worse about my situation.

I have an amazing best friend that pointed out to me that I haven’t screwed up much in my life and to have this mistake under my belt is not going to ruin me for the rest of my life..as long I take the action that I need to continue forward on this journey called life.

 

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”