Nobody has to like you
Yes, people don’t have to like you and that’s okay
As a young girl, I wanted people to like me. I wanted to be accepted and wanted people to desire to be around me. However, this was not my fortune. In hindsight, I am grateful that I got the short end of the stick when it came to likeability. I have learned not only to be okay with not being liked but to also thrive in spite of it.
I constantly changed schools as a kid and that left me little to no wiggle room to expand my socialization skills because I always had the big hurdle of being the “new kid” to jump over first and I wasn’t able to stay in one place long enough to make some friends.
Feeling Victimized
I felt as if I was cursed because no one seemed to like me. I often kept to myself and was a shy introvert. But unfortunately, this made me even more of a target for ridicule and jeers from my peers. For the longest time, I would feel as if I didn’t deserve to be in the room. And if I was in the room, I apologized for my very existence thinking that my mere presence was a problem within itself. This was my subconscious belief for a long time so subsequently, I tread lightly.
Never “letting myself go” in public, never speaking too freely, never voicing my opinions until I was spoken to and the worst of all, I let people get away with almost murder.
I would constantly find myself getting steamrolled and having my feelings discarded. I would have a hard time standing up for myself. I was afraid that people would think I was mean and harsh if I exhibited a backbone and fought back. Because of this, I bit my tongue when being verbally violated, I laughed along when jokes were made at my expense, I became Helen Keller when I heard their demeaning whispers about me, I had no boundaries and so I let anything happen.
I’ve realized that if you give people an inch they will take a kilometer. It is better to nip it in the bud now than to have to muster up the courage to put them in their place later. I thought that unless I was being physically attacked, I had no grounds to react. That was just an excuse. Even though I was the one getting disrespected, I still felt like,
“Who am I to voice my opinion out?”
I had this fear and anxiety about being disliked. This made me allow and tolerate all forms of disrespect. You never seem to be able to stop until you decide enough is enough. That you don’t deserve to be someone’s punching bag and that you matter enough to at least be given respect.
The thing is, nobody has to like you. But respect is a must.
The Other Consequence
Now the other side of fearing the dislike of others is not truly being yourself. If you constantly feel as if you must censor yourself in order to be in the midst of a group of people, that is not normal and you shouldn’t let it be your normal. It wasn’t up to recently that I have finally been able to find my true personality. All these years, I felt like I didn’t have one. That wasn’t the case, I had one but simply repressed it deep inside of me because I thought being me would not be acceptable. And given that I was already often treated as an outcast, I was not trying to give people more ammo to dislike me even more.
But for the last three years of high school, I started to discover my personality little after little as I began to look within. I am goofy, I am spontaneous, I am free-spirited, I am not nice, I am kind, I am a deep thinker, I am a tall dreamer and I am audacious. After I began to realize that my social anxiety had shrouded me from the reality of my personality for a long time, I decided to continue to exercise this newfound part of me that had been hidden for so long. From there, I began to cultivate my personality even more than thereon.
Trying to adapt to everyone else’s moods and personalities was not healthy and was very exhausting. You begin to lose sight of your identity. The truth is, you should never restrict yourself and forfeit your propensity to experience a joyful life because you want to accommodate other people. Never shrink yourself or dim your light because of fearing your dislike-ability. In a world where everyone is trying to be each other, be radical. Be yourself.
Confidence is not, “They will like me.” Confidence is, “I’ll be fine if they don’t”
No truer words could have formulated my experience as much as this. I felt as if being confident depended on how people perceived me and whether or not I was accepted by them. It isn’t until you realize your mood and confidence don’t have to depend on the feelings of others that you truly achieve confidence. Don’t be afraid to be disliked. You are your own uniquely separate human being with your own dreams, quirks, and interests. If simply being you offends people, so be it. You do not live for them and so they should not be determining factors on how you should comport yourself.
This freedom is enviable
The Freedom that comes from being unafraid of being disliked is incredible. The power that society has on people is that there are unspoken rules of restriction placed on everyone that categorizes people from the time they are born. This tactic has been in play since the beginning of time. Because you see that being yourself can be seen as too brash or too ridiculous to actually do, you naturally fall into the thin line that society has drawn out for you and so instead of being you, you become a person that you are expected to embody. You trade in your soul to be a ghost of your true self. All in the name of fitting in. That is not a transaction that you want to have to make every single day of your life.
So, don’t be afraid to be you. Don’t be afraid to irritate some people, don’t allow the opinions of others to carry such weight and importance in your life. Dare to be Different, means to dare to be disliked. Never align yourself to the fickle opinions of outsiders, as long as you are joyful and fulfilled, Just be. Likeability be damned!
