Self Discovery 101

IMPORTANT LESSONS I’VE LEARNED / PATTERNS I NOTICED ABOUT MYSELF SO FAR BY 25:

I’ve been trying to remain authentic to myself but it’s hard trying to see myself objectively. It’s hard to see patterns in myself over the years, deciding what is true or not about myself.

I’ve been a doormat a lot of my life and felt resentful towards others because of the treatment I tolerated. I decided to make more conscious changes in my life about that. A few things I’ve learned and reflected on during this quarantine:

If you hear people saying the same thing about you over the years, chances are that it’s probably true. I realized this in my relationships with people from totally different social circles in my life and always hearing that I have this scared look on my face or that I can be dramatic or helpless or whatever.
I have heard that I cringe a lot and it shows on my face. I don’t know why I did this, I think I started doing this because I was told that my uncomfortable face looks funny. A lot of people did like to tease me a lot
I have heard that I’m too nice sometimes (no joke- I was voted the nicest person in my marching band before). That was 10 years ago.
Nowadays people have told me that I can be blunt even if I don’t mean it. I’ll admit, I can be spacey about things (I told this girl Jessica in my boyfriend’s group she looked like a pumpkin because she was wearing orange, but she interpreted that as me calling her and she took offense to it. But she was a cute pumpkin! I’m sorry I can’t help it if you’re gonna take that as an insult but I didn’t mean it that way…)

Being helpless or greedy are unattractive qualities to have. I was always scared to mess up because of a perfectionist mindset. Afraid to fuck up and want to have someone do something before me or see an example of what someone else does before I do it, usually in work environments, homework in school, etc. But I heard a great quote from Elizabeth Gilbert in the book “Big Magic,” that “Done is better than perfect.” That totally hit me and made me less afraid to do things in my life. I’m trying to listen to my instincts more instead of looking towards others for help. Along with my habitual scared face, people would want to help me out like I’m some poor puppy. My coworkers / friends / parents would always want to feed me like I’m starving (I eat a lot). My current boyfriend and my ex-boyfriend have both mentioned similar things they noticed in the way that people treat me:
Current) “I don’t know what it is about you that makes people want to take care of you.”
Ex-boyfriend) “I don’t know what it is about you but I noticed a lot of people like to tease you.”
And I have concluded that it may be because of my baby features. I am a female with a baby face (I have been told I look like an ABG – Asian baby girl).
It’s hard to be taken seriously sometimes and I’ve experience this multiple times in my life. As a girl, people think it’s cute that you want to try something or be independent or lead – basically channeling my male energy. In the workplace, there’s an automatic credibility that comes with being a man, and that most people will take what you say seriously over a woman’s opinion.)
To counteract helplessness, I’ve made sure to keep working hard at things that I don’t understand. If I am confused on something, I will write down the questions I have and start to list some possible answers or solutions to those problems. I need to take a deep breath and get the fuck over it. Most things are all in my head anyways.
I used to be very greedy with money, or rather overly frugal with it. It was bad that I was seen as an uptight.

Being Authentic: If you want to find out if you’re acting authentic or not, consider if you’re acting like someone is watching you. Many people act like people are watching them, like smiling a lot even when nothing cheery is going on. I used to smile a lot even when there was nothing to smile about because I wanted to look approachable. I also cringed in social situations if someone did something weird because I thought I would look funny to others who might be watching – I was told it was funny before, and I did it so often habitually because I wanted to people to like me and it became part of my personality. But a friend told me that I overreact a lot to new information and it really shows on my face. Another instance was my brother because I wrote a rap song which was actually pretty cringe but he decided to show it to my sisters at first instead of me because he knew I would judge (in my mind I totally would have and I actually realized it wasn’t that bad lol). Because he didn’t want to be met with judgment, he closed himself off to me. I don’t want my brother and others to close myself off to me because of something stupid like that! To be more genuine, I wanted to exhibit a default calm look on my face instead of something cheery all the time how I’m feeling on the inside on my face. If it’s negative, I will just exhibit a poker face so I don’t make others uncomfortable around me; if I’m happy, I’ll smile because I know it will be genuine. I’m usually calm about situations because I want people to be able to approach me, but I’ve found that being more genuine will be much more appreciated by myself and others – people can pick up on fakeness. Subtleties like that. I think in “How to win friends and influence people” by Dale Carnegie, he mentioned the difference between appreciation and flattery – that one is sincere and the other isn’t, and that has stuck with me for years.

How I learned not to get offended:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPEPyltXn-o
Know yourself. Know your worth. I remember watching this drama years ago called Nobuta Wo Produce and in it there are rumors going on about a boy and a girl that weren’t true. The boy can’t handle it, whereas the girl went about her life unphased. The boy asked her why she wasn’t worried about the rumors. She asked him if he believed them and he said no. She said then that’s all that matters. I watched this in middle school but damn it stuck to me. I have my own truth. And there’s the version(s) other people have about you. The only thing you should really care about is if you know the truth, and if people you genuinely care about/trust believe your truth. It’s not usually about you (how people treat you is not about you). My own experience: if I feel like someone is treating me badly, I’ll ask someone I trust if that person is usually like that and determine if it’s personal or not.

What you say about other people says a lot more about you. A friend told me this once in 2014 and it stuck with me for years. This lesson was reinstated to me back in 2017 when I was talking about this girl’s grades in college with me and 2 other guys and how we don’t know if she’ll make it through the semester, saying things like “Does she even care,” etc. Then one of the guys in my group straight up said “I think you should just worry about yourself” with a smile. But I knew what he meant. Translation: “I think you should just mind your own fucking business”. And it stuck with me! I was offended at the time but after years I was grateful that some random guy in class put me in my place and I respect you so much Daniel. Because I had been doing that for years. Talking about other’s personal issues as casual conversation. It was really nasty and I cringe at myself for doing that. Since then I’ve been more mindful / aware of conversation like this. Sometimes I will get dragged into conversation like this, but I’m glad I don’t initiate it out of boredom.

In terms of friendship, I thought I valued quality over quantity, but I realized that quality of friendship increases with quantity. Yes, you can talk about supposedly “deep” stuff with some friends. For example, I have this childhood friend who I know I can talk about anything with. She’s seriously the bomb- nonjudgmental, open-minded, a good listener, gives good advice, always a good time… whenever we hang out, we can pick up from where we left off. It’s a great friendship we have and I love her so much! She’s been my longest friend since we were in kindergarten together and now as adults. However, we only meet up once or twice a year now. It’s been like that for years now but I noticed that I can’t just call her up to see how she’s doing casually. I noticed that the quality of our friendship has changed. I feel like I was trying to hold on to how our friendship used to be like or try to become closer to her as she was out living her life. But that’s okay. Friends drift and change as they should and that’s okay. As adults, we should understand that our friends change. No matter what, I am happy with the fact that we will always be friends.

In terms of friendship, I noticed that guys tend to bond more over solving problems together. Girls tend to bond more over sharing feelings.

Maybe I’ll dedicate a post about friendships later. But for now, I think I’ll do some yoga. lol