Today, I am grateful that I have little regard for what anyone else thinks about my beliefs and actions. As we develop through childhood, it becomes more and more challenging to be who we are. We are programmed from our earliest days to fit into a particular form. Anything that doesn’t work exactly like that isn’t acceptable. Making people feel inadequate about who they are. It can become a lifelong affliction if you aren’t careful. Today, I am grateful that I don’t care what anyone else thinks about who I am and what I do.

Building Your Cage

You are worrying about what other people think is a full-time job. When you are younger, you worry about everything. How your hair looks, what you say, how you walk, the clothes you wear, and any other aspect of your existence can be judged. You begin building your cage when you start to construct those things to be the least offensive or give the least amount of fodder for others to pick on.

This cage doesn’t seem too harmful at first. The bars are constructed with every compromise you make with yourself about what you let the world see. An opinion you keep to yourself to avoid a conflict up goes a bar. Actions you take which go along with the crowd, even though you don’t believe it right, up goes another bar. Bars start to be constructed so quickly that you don’t have time to notice the cage you have placed yourself inside. One of the expectations of others is the worry you won’t fit in. The fear that your true self will be seen and then rejected. Over time living like that is who you think you are, but that isn’t true. You are not in a cage. You are free.

Breaking Free

Me, I lived in that cage for a lot of years, pretending not to notice the limitations of life. The worst part is that you forget the parts of yourself that you were hiding from the world in the first place.

Something started to happen in life, and events began to occur, reminding me of something I couldn’t remember. Who was I? Why didn’t I seem to have the correct answer to those questions? That is the beginning of breaking out of that cage.

Remembering who you are shouldn’t be as hard as it is, but you begin to see the cage disappear when you start to remember so quickly that you wonder why you let the cell encompass you in the first place.

Today I am Free

To be free is when what you think and how you behave is your true self, and I am living with that thought. I believe what I know in my heart is right, and I do what I know is right, and I don’t let the idea of what someone else might think to stop me.

The fear that my authentic self will be rejected is almost totally removed because I realize it isn’t my job to be liked and understood by everyone else. The thoughts and issues others have with me are none of my business.

The type of person I am in my heart is my business, and I take my business very seriously.

So hate me, love me, ignore me; it is your choice. I do give a flying fig, newton, what you think. And I mean that in the right way. I am grateful that I don’t care what others think of me. It’s time to break free.