The Option Was Clear: You Are Worthy of Not Comparing Yourself to Others

The option was clear that it is time to be a free, independent woman. Free of ties holding me down, free of a career with no destiny, and the freedom to express myself as I please.

I’ve written several stories, poems, motivational whatnots, and then some, about not doubting myself, but I’ve had a bunch of trouble implementing them due to some past misadventures and traumatic situations, but what I’ve learned through my more recent endeavors is how success isn’t some magical destination point you pick on a map. Success isn’t sitting in a high-paying job ready to bang your head against the wall thinking you’re going nowhere. Success also isn’t having a picket fence lifestyle with prince charming and a bagillion dollars, though both of those would be nice.

Lately, Facebook has liked to inform me how this person had a baby and that person got engaged. I even just found out my twin sister is moving in with her boyfriend. Meanwhile, I’m single as fuck and proud. I’m still in my young mid 20’s and I’m not ready to settle down yet. I may not have a sleep schedule either… I can drive for Uber at “buttfuck o’clock” in the morning and no one to scorn me for being gone. I can attend an open mic nite or performance without someone wondering why I’m not spending 24/7 with them while I have a job and a life. I especially don’t have someone telling me indirectly it’s not ok to go camping with my friends, go to my karate classes, or how I’m never a good enough partner. That was basically the dynamic of my last relationship with “Voldemort” for 10.5 months. Once the relationship was over, I questioned my worth, which was already in question in my head due to many “not so good” relationships with my blood family. When faced with traumatic adversity, you have to condition your brain to see light to tell yourself “you are good enough”. For me, in order to attain as positive of an outlook towards myself as I can, I make sure to surround myself by people who will still be there for me, even when I feel like absolute poopie, and look for every opportunity possible to better myself. On August 13, 2016, I participated in a local talent show in Humboldt Park, Chicago, as a flow artist (“dancer”) and won first place in the adult division. My prize of loveliness was 2 tickets to a Steppenwolf Theater show and 2 tickets to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in super good seats. After I found out I won, I was in disbelief, but told myself I’m worthy of accomplishments and winning talent shows. I am also worthy of my own creative creations of my own unique style being “good enough”. I’m still not quite in the mood to start dating again, but that’s ok, I can take 1 roommate friend as my date to the play and the other roommate friend as my date to the orchestra, both very attractive gay men! Problem solved! I’d rather be single than in a relationship that’s pulling me down. I will keep doing my best to ignore people’s Facebook bragging. I also need to tell myself I’m worthy of meeting a “real man”, as well as I am worthy of having real friends.

In the adventures of the recent college graduate and “adulting”, what else is important besides friends and relationships? My career. I’ve also told this story 18,000 times, but long story short, I got a nice shiny job right out of school as a Web Developer using my degree, I had bad manager syndrome and didn’t fit into the company, wasn’t around any peers, and was riding the fail train since day 1. I was on 2 separate teams, where the second team’s ship sank faster for me. It reached a point where it was either jump out the window with a parachute or be caught in the fire. I of course chose the parachute; on January 29, 2016, I walked into corporate desk job land for the last time. Now, I’m free from walking into work with the weight of the failure on my shoulders and happily serving as “Your Friendly Neighborhood Uber Driver” with a side of freelance gigs and however else I can scrape money. Now, I’m trying to figure out what to do next. At least for now, I’m still making money and able to pay my bills. I may have failed miserably at my job and had 0 success with what my job description told me to do, but I was able to take soft skill training classes, learn how businesses work, and get to attend an 800 dollar transformational leadership weekend seminar I didn’t have to pay for. There’s always something positive, even in the worst of situations.

SInce it’s Olympics o’clock, I sometimes watch the games with the roommate friends, as well as see results, motivational quotes, and more all over the interwebs. Especially with being an identical twin, I inadvertently catch myself comparing myself to others. I see people all over my Facebook news feed and these olympic athletes realizing their dreams. One of my biggest dreams is for content on one of my websites, blogs, or Youtube videos to go viral, thus, I would be a star. However, since stardom in any sort is incredibly difficult to attain, I need to be proud of myself for smaller milestones leading up to the ultimate goal. While driving for Uber, a lot of people ask me if I have other jobs/endeavors I’m pursuing in the meantime. I tell them about my dreams to go viral, my performance endeavors, my freelance gigs, and my uncertainty of continuing to pursue the field I studied in school. A lot of my passengers provide me with reassurance (as well as my dearest friends) of my personal goodness, which motivates me not to give up through adversity. I’ve received compliments on my quirkiness, which I sometimes fear is “too much” for others to handle as well.

I have to keep telling myself I’m worthy of accomplishments, having real friends, and having my creativity be worth something. Sometimes, I have to bash it through my head 8 million times to tell myself “I am good enough”. As long as I continue to shower myself and surround myself with positivity and not give up, the goal line will be able to be attained!

Stop Doubting Yourself

A little while ago, I wrote a motivational speech explaining how people should stop doubting themselves. Unfortunately, I've been quite guilty of doing so lately.

Thoughts from my past have lately been popping up in my head, all of questioning myself and decisions I made. The most recent example is when I recently decided to make a career change and left my “nice shiny job”, jumping off the top of a Chicago skyscraper and pulling the parachute cord. It was one of the scariest decisions I had ever made. I left safety and exchanged it for the unknown and adventures. I didn’t think I’d still be able to maintain independence, but have so far been successful.

When you’re a little kid, positive actions are rewarded by affirmation and negative and against the norm behavior are answered by punishment. For me, it seemed like everything in my line of sight was answered with a punishment or snarky response. It all started by getting kicked around in the womb by my twin, thus being born second. I didn’t care about one measly minute, but to her, it meant everything. She always wanted to be better than me and all I wanted to do was be me. I was always the brown banana in the bunch; it was the one that was still tasty and often thrown away or overlooked. I once walked outside in a pink scarf with flowers on it, a black shirt, pink skinny jeans, piano high knee socks, and skate shoes, all tied together with a pink bow headband. My mom gave me the stink eye and ask me if I was about to go in public looking how I did. I walked out the door. My sister didn’t receive the same treatment in my presence, and likely not at all. Little did I realize how bad I felt like I was screwed over for my adult life in terms of believing in myself.

Many people have told me how you're supposed to take pride in yourself, but how can you if the demons in your head are like a cancer eating at your self worth due to the dragons of your past you’re wrangling with? According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it is quite essential to feel a sense of belonging in this world. I wanted to find a special place of being welcomed and praised.

There have been many situations where everyone seemed to believe in me except for me. For example, towards the end of my senior year in college, as a Web Development major, I was given this assignment to make a web page with specific requirements. I was in the library among some of my friends investing in my screen. The demon spoke to me and told me there’s no way I’d ever be able to accomplish this task. When I took a few programming classes prior to this, I had to repeat 2 of them. Both classes were the ones I took with my sister, who showered me with how I was the most useless and crappy programmer ever. I was never really praised and thus, believed I was an awful programmer. I went to the professor’s office several times and he told me I’d surely be able to solve the programming puzzle. After mustering up the courage to spray the demon with pepper spray in the eye instead of backing down immediately, I successfully completed the assignment.

On December 5, 2015, I successfully tested for my black belt in Shotokan Karate. I was constantly showered with compliments by my peers in class, as well as from my friends. I wasn’t sure if I was going to pass the test and would ask my friends, “what if I failed my test?” I sometimes had these toxic thoughts in my head of how I’m not worthy of being a black belt. When I was trying to land my first job right out of school back when I was overweight, I was about to basically have interview number 20 and hadn’t received any offers yet. My mom told me I probably wasn’t receiving any offers because I was overweight and didn’t look good enough. I ended up landing that job. I took my karate test in front of the instructor who had once given me a low score. I was ready to show the world what I was made of. I obviously passed, am worthy of large accomplishments, and need to tell my brain to accept it.

In regards to maintaining relationships with other people, I sometimes felt like people were going to be offset by my quirkiness and how loud I am. I’ve had way too many poor and abusive relationships with men for my own good and I was bullied by peers and family from Pre-K through the end of college. I had also experienced several roommate fail situations, due to fear of communication on my end stemming from the fact standing up for myself at home was punished consistently, among other reasons. Surely enough, I was able to learn from the reasons that made my past relationships fail and hit the jackpot this time around. I am still not so lucky yet in terms of finding a romantic partner, but I’m sure it will soon change.

To top it off, when I graduated from college and was left to suffer the wrath of my parents, I was also left knowing I needed to move on from my high school friends. Thankfully, one of my friends from college introduced me to the Belegarth Medieval Combat Society, a group of nerds who enjoy playing a contact sport battle game where you hit each other with foam weapons. I tried to find a community (of women) to accept me in college, which turned into me being considered too weird to recruit people and only good enough to hand out the finger sandwiches and show Powerpoint slides. To my disbelief, after I was introduced to this nerd community, I was welcomed and accepted with open arms. I am worthy of having real friends who love and accept me for who I am and need to keep telling myself that.

Let me begin again by asking, “how would you take pride in yourself if you’ve been beaten down so many times?” The answer is resilience. People are bullies to those who value themselves because the bullies feel the need to hurt others to make themselves feel prideful. The targets for bullying are usually people who identify as being “different”. Every time I doubt myself and prove myself against a challenge, I become empowered. The empowerment motivates me to want to continue to push myself farther than I think I am capable of. Sticks and stones may break your bones, words may break your soul, but the only way to win the fight is to take a stand and keep standing.

Open Mic Nite Performance Of "Stop Doubting Yourself"

This handy little poem is basically me advocating for people to stop doubting themselves.



I deviated a bit from the original script due to working on getting more comfortable not having a paper with me, but the original words of wisdom are here: http://dbzmaron.blogspot.com/2014/07/stop-doubting-yourself.html



This was taken at Wicker Mic in Wicker Park, Chicago on 8-29-14!



Enjoy!

Stop Doubting Yourself

Here is me telling me and the rest of the awesome universe to stop freeking doubting themselves and putting themselves down. It's not healthy and not in your toolbox for happiness either... Here are my words of wisdom on this subject:

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Dear beautiful universe,

Why... oh why must you doubt yourself like most of the general population? In a world where the norm says that confidence is key, it also appears that much of the norm also lacks said key aspect, but why?

Have you been bullied before? Have you been mistreated a ton? Or even cheated on, defeated, or stomped on? Figuratively to the last part of course... Is your support system diminishing? Can you even not count on your family for anything? If you've said yes to any of those, you may have been in a world of hurt at some point in your life... unfortunately, all of that garbage can lead to feelings of unworthiness and thinking you're someone less than who you really are and what you're truly capable of accomplishing.

If other people telling you that you can't do this and you can't do that and xyz the list can go on, don't listen to them. Yeah, that's easier said than done... been there, done that several times, but one big thing I say is that if you genuinely do suck at something, you'll know and be 100% sure. As much as other people's opinions don't matter, receiving positive enforcement always gives a glimmer of hope and then some. If it's your friends that are causing you to doubt yourself, then nab a group of friends who embrace you and give those jerkfaces that you're currently chilling with a "third finger salute"! Don't let people suck the life out of you... because only YOU are in control... not those GOONS!

If your family is doing that, same rules from above apply! No really, they do... except give them the finger on the inside and just prance away into the distant light...

It breaks my heart to see tons of people holding themselves back... from other people’s words too... and of course I'm guilty of doing the same thing plenty of times... but not only does it hurt, it's also a deep hole to dig yourself out of... and I am currently in the process of climbing my rear end out of that same hole...

If you realize how much you're depriving yourself of the list of first amendment rights, you'll realize how much you're truly damaging yourself... You need to be more aware of the fact that we're free to paint out own designs as we please to an extent, some restrictions apply... because you can make anything you want out of a bunch of dimes...! So if you're doubting yourself, stop it! Right now! You can snap yourself onto a positive track whenever you acquire that strong hunger for change and bettering yourself! Positive reinforcement always helps too to an extent!

Stop misguiding yourself and just tell yourself "I AM a good person", "I CAN do this", and "look how SUCCESSFUL I am" because you're generally capable of a lot more than you think. Find those who can feed you words of wisdom and give you a giant hug afterwards. Find those who support your every move, no matter how silly. Find those who can tell you that you made a mistake and encourage you to carry on.

You can do it, you can do it, you can do it, you can do it, you can do it... x infinite! Words are power, power is yours, the choices are infinite, and aim your goals higher than you think you can achieve... Keep reinforcing positivity in your life and the words "I can do it", no matter how out there and large your ambitions are and you'll be hugging the moon in no time!

With unlimited amounts of love,
Rebs McDuxler :)