I used to be one of those people who was all up in my mind trying to look good, avoid looking bad, and trying to impress everyone. I tried to fit in in every group I ever came across. Like a fricken chameleon!
I was so bland and trying-to-fit-inny, I bored myself.
Trying to reconcile being the overachiever A-grade goody-good student while also trying to be the cool, sporty, arty, laid back chick that I wanted to be seen as was a bloody great effort I tell ya!
I didn’t realise how much of my mind power was going towards analysing people and situations and then adapting my behaviour to match.
But this failed miserably.
People don’t like perfect people.
If we can’t find any creases in your perfect facade, we can’t trust you, and we don’t like people we can’t trust. We know you’re wearing a mask.
These days things have changed. The most awesome thing has happened – the more honest I am about my idiosyncrasies, the more engaged you guys are with what I write. When I write about something weird I did or thought, you guys message me to say how much you appreciated reading your thoughts on a page. It’s pretty awesome, because it means I can just write whatever pops into my head, I don’t have to wait for my life to be perfect and beautiful. You prefer reading about it when it isn’t!
My favourite people are people who strut their imperfections.
They’re quirky and proud of it; they do things differently and aren’t much bothered by what others think about it.
They fling their white wooly coat to the floor and flaunt their black sheep self.
In the end, we’re all a bit weird.
We all have drunken-monkey minds, the only difference between ‘weird’ people and ‘normal’ people is that the normal people are pretending.
When you’re authentic about your quirks, people love you. They fall for you. They high five you. It’s always refreshing to be around people with funny idiosyncrasies that they don’t apologise for.
Because it’s so rare in our society these days. Everyone’s pretending to be perfect on social media, yet no one can relate to the perfect, beautiful, lovely person who never seems to have anything wrong in their life.
We don’t like perfect. It bores us.
We like to know that we’re not the only one who’s flailing round completely winging it in life. And that we’re not the only weirdo pretending to be normal.
Sometimes we spend so long pretending to be normal that we forget who our Self is.
We do it to fit in, but it just makes us fit in with bland and boring. That’s no fun for us or anyone else.
So start being honest about your weird self, and see what happens! I bet you’ll find people will love you more, not less. It can’t be as bad as living in a self-created prison of normalcy all the time. Sure it’s safe in there, but dull as all hell.
