Disclaimer: I’m a certified loner. I truly enjoy my own company…if I could choose to go days without speaking to anybody and just being quiet by myself I would. I’m an introvert & some of those times I just want to be by myself, I just tell people “I need to recharge”. Judge if you must, I’m owning my truth.
Humans are wired to desire connection – there’s strength in numbers, right? In some environments survival depends on not being alone, and I’m not talking about the wilderness…..
Growing up it was cool to be a part of a squad, to have people to sit with in the lunch room, to be a part of something that felt bigger than us. We got a sense of comfort from being associated with something that we can wrap ourselves in.
The desire to be a part of something isn’t a negative thing – being connected to other people is how we populate the world…👀. But what can happen over time is we start to prioritize fitting in and then we start to do things specifically for the sake of fitting in.
I can remember what it was like as a younger person to want to be a part of a group. The worst feeling was finding out that I’d been left out or excluded from something, so I behaved differently in the hopes that I would be included. I changed myself in order to fit in.
At the time I didn’t know that for the confident woman, fitting in isn’t the goal; belonging is.
In her book, “The Gifts of Imperfection”, Brene Brown writes: “Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.”
Fitting in looks like changing our shape in order to “fit” the mindset, ideals, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors of something that we had no part in designing. The mold was crafted and put in place before we arrived, and we conform, reshape and mold ourselves so we don’t disrupt. We fit in because we desire the association.
When we become adults, we get to choose the friends and communities in our lives so one might think that grown folks don’t deal with these struggles. But when we’re confused about our own brilliance and we’ve been taught that being attached to other people is more important that being attached to ourselves, we reshape ourselves to fit in.
The confident woman isn’t focused on fitting in because she trusts, honors and values her full self. Spaces that don’t have the capacity for her full self won’t be able to handle her self-discovery and growth, so she chooses not to be in those spaces. Folding herself to fit in causes her to trust herself less.
I love a good demonstration with props to illustrate a point, and in this video I’m demonstrating what fitting in can look like and what it does to us in the long run. Spoiler alert: fitting in works against our confidence.
I’m no longer interested in finding spaces where I have to fold myself to fit in. I only want to be in spaces where I belong, spaces that have the capacity for all of me, don’t judge me and where I can bring my full self to the party. If this is something you desire for yourself and you’re not sure where to begin, I created this free training to support you.
Choose yourself. You’re worth the effort.
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