What Must You Let Go of in Order to Be the Best Version of Yourself?

This is question number 2 in Rachel Hollis' book "What If You Are the Answer?"

Oh boy. This is another great question.

#1 - Fear, depression, and anxiety

I talked about this in my last post. After my dad passed away when I was 12, I became a very fearful, depressed, and anxious person. I won't go into too much detail, but I saw a lot of terrifying things when he was sick. I could make a separate post just on this topic alone, but for now I'll say that he suffered from a nasty, horrific condition called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP). It is a neurodegenerative disease that has no known cause, and no known cure. It slowly...painfully slowly...causes your brain and body to not properly function. His emotions were completely mixed up - he would sob when something was funny, laugh hysterically when something was serious, and scream/get angry when nothing was really happening that would cause him to be mad. He gradually lost his balance, then speech, then over time became paralyzed, except for his writing hand. We communicated through dry erase boards and hand signals, which did not always work. I won't go through all the horrifying things I saw, but the main one that sticks in my mind is when he was still trying to walk on his own, but was losing mobility every day. He attempted to transfer from his walker to the toilet on his own, unbeknownst to my mom and me. We heard a huge BANG! We rushed to the source of the sound and found him on the floor, head cracked open, blood everywhere. He had fallen during his transfer and hit his head on the bathtub. I called 911 while my mom helped him. He received staples in his head, and we knew we could not take care of him at home on our own any longer. It is such a cruel, unforgiving disease. It is a huge reason for the fear, depression, and anxiety of life that I developed. This spilled into all areas of life, and I became afraid to truly live. Over time, it just became a part of me and my personality.

#2 - Perfectionism

I think this one is a result of the fear, depression, and anxiety. I get so worried about everything that could go wrong, so caught up in needing everything to be absolutely perfect, that 1 of 2 things occur:

1: I don't do anything at all.

2: I do it, but if something even minor goes "wrong", or doesn't go exactly to my carefully designed plan, I panic and give up altogether.

Now how is this productive, you might ask? It's not.

#3 - Caring what others think

This is something that has kept me from achieving so many things. It's actually very sad when I think about it. Whether it's people I love or complete strangers, their judgment of me - whether perceived or real - would debilitate me. From something as small as the type of music I like, to something as big as what I wanted to do when I grew up, I cared so deeply about others' opinions that I would try to force myself to fit into someone else's box so that they would approve of me. I talked about this in my last post too - constantly seeking approval from others. Suppressing my true personality, desires, and potential in order to meet others' expectations or conform to their standards.

All this has left me with is unhappiness, inauthenticity, and wasted potential. All for what? The crazy thing is, I can't even make everyone happy - no one can. I've spent so much time trying to appease others to the detriment of myself, but when it comes down to it, everyone has different opinions anyway. So what is the freaking point? It takes a huge amount of energy to conform to everyone else instead of just being yourself. It's sort of like telling a lie - you have to keep track of what you tell people and end up caught up in a web of lies. This takes way more energy than just being authentic, and having some people dislike or you or disagree with you - which is going to happen no matter what! Even when I did conform to everyone else, there were plenty of people who didn't agree with me, over something that I didn't even agree with myself!

Ok, so let's break all of these down. How do I release these anchors that are weighing me down?

Depression - I saw at a young age that life can be cruel, terrible, sad, unfair, and ugly. But it can also be the opposite. We cannot expect to live a great life if we cling to the negatives. This doesn't mean we live in la-la-land and pretend the bad doesn't exist. It means we acknowledge the bad, but we don't live in it.

Anxiety - A lot of my anxiety comes from expecting things to go wrong, or feeling pressure to do everything all at once. If something goes wrong, we will cross that bridge when we get there and figure it out, just like we have done every time in the past. It's impossible to accomplish a bunch of things at once - we need to break things down into manageable pieces and chip away. The more you procrastinate, the more the anxiety builds, making the task seem way scarier than it actually is. For me, anxiety is mainly something my mind creates about things that are not even a big deal, but it feels like a big deal. Or, my mind creates anxiety over things that don't exist at all.

Fear - I have 2 big fears: fear of failure, and oddly enough - a fear of success. Fear of failure is very common. Failure doesn't feel good, but neither will being in my 90's looking back on my life and realizing all the things I never tried because I was scared to make a mistake. We're all taught as kids that mistakes happen - we learn from them and make improvements. Mistakes are inevitable, and practice makes perfect, or better (because remember, perfection does not always exist, and striving for perfection can be detrimental). We're taught this as kids, but for some reason it doesn't apply to us as adults? Do we become robots at 18 years old that are expected to never get it wrong? Even AI makes errors.

Fear of success is interesting. What if I do achieve my goals and get what I want from life? What if I can't handle it? What if it's too big? What if I don't know what to do? Do I even deserve the success? This all stems down to imposter syndrome - not feeling like you deserve something good, or not feeling like you are qualified. To this, I tell myself - I will figure it out, just like I've figured everything else out. What makes me not deserve something good? Look around - everyone you view as successful is just another human being who has made mistakes, has flaws, and did not quit. What makes them worthy of success, but not you? Would I rather just stay where I am? People will often stay in a familiar hell than reach for an unknown heaven. We're often afraid to fail, but can also be afraid of the unknown that accompanies success. To both fears I say - my biggest fear is accomplishing nothing because of my fears.

Perfectionism - I think this goes hand-in-hand with fear and anxiety - making us feel that if something isn't perfect, then we can't do it. Perfectionism is like a fancy version of procrastination. The crazy part is that many times, no one would even know how something was "supposed" to look like - this is all in our own heads. It's like dancing for an audience and you clap when you meant to tap your foot, and you're thinking "Oh no, I messed up, everything is ruined - when no one even knows you made a mistake except you. Even if you did make a more visible and noticeable mistake - is this the end? It's a very dramatic way of thinking, and if you wait until something is what you consider to be perfect, you can push something off for forever. If you do something and it's not perfect and then give up entirely, all you're doing is now giving yourself a 0% chance of success. This all or nothing mentality never serves us.

Caring what others think - This one I am constantly working on with myself. If I care too much about what others think, to the point where I don't do anything at all - what is this accomplishing exactly? I'm so focused on the bad things people would think, but what about the good things? What about all the people I could have helped who will never hear my story because of my obsession over the ones who will not "like" me, or won't align with what I have to say? I need to accept that not everyone will align with what I say, and that's ok! What about people who are mean and will make negative comments? This happens with everything. I remember one time I made a video about nutrition back when I was in college (my degree was in nutrition), and someone - a complete stranger - made a negative comment on my video. I cried like a baby and stopped making videos. Over a total stranger being an internet troll? Come on, Andria. This is going to happen. Like Rachel Hollis has said - this is the price of admission. You can't please everyone - humans have different opinions - we know this. And when someone is mean? That's on them. That makes THEM look bad, not me. And what happens when you care so much about the opinions of those closest to you - because their opinions do matter to us. This is tough to deal with. If someone close to us doesn't like our goals, dreams, and the steps we're taking towards them...or if they are supportive but skeptical? Here is something else Rachel Hollis has said that was very helpful for me - they can't see your vision. We need to stop trying to convince others that what we want to do is awesome, and we need to put that energy into just doing the thing. They may very well be coming from a good place and have good intentions with their concerns, comments, and fears, but that shouldn't stop you. Don't even spend time trying to convince them. Just do the thing. Maybe they'll understand and see your vision after you start living it out. Maybe not, which would be hurtful, but at this point I feel that it is more painful to ignore the calling on your spirit than to try and have others not agree with it.