How I Stopped Caring About ‘What Others Think of Me’ & Becoming the Best Version of Myself

Since the day I started understanding the human language that is supposed to keep us connected, I have been hearing some of the sentences on the loop which are:

a) If only you were a little fair, you would have looked so good

b) If you were more intelligent, you would have a brighter future

c) If you were a little more confident, you would have achieved so much and

So many more such ‘if’ and ‘would have’ that was quite a big part of my childhood. From childhood till my graduation, I was always determined by ‘what others think of me’

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When I was a little girl, I was compared by my relatives based on how I looked and my grades. And when I was in college, I was gaining my confidence back but I was constantly at the target. Apparently, in college, people used to say that I am rude because I don’t talk much and if I used to interact with any of the guys in class, I was given names that I don’t even want to write.

Result?

Well, surely during childhood with all those comparisons and regular comments, I had lost my confidence to even think I mattered but gradually when I started gaining back my confidence, I was pulled back into that dark tunnel where once again, I found myself losing the ability to think straight. I started feeling that perhaps there is something deep inside that is wrong otherwise why would people judge me, and talk badly about me?

Then?

I started ignoring everyone and everything they used to say about me. From what I can recall, it surely used to hurt a lot to be misunderstood and judged on what you are not yet I somehow knew that I don’t want to fall back on past patterns and rise above all the negativity that people were cursing me with.

One evening when my roommate and I were talking about random college stuff, I asked her, ‘Hey, do you know why our classmates speak absurdly about me? Like I am seeing things from my perspective and I don’t think I have said or done anything that can hurt anyone but perhaps I need to understand someone else’s opinion so can you tell me why is that?