2025-01-19

I liked who I was today. I've always been too conscious about how I act around people. What I am trying to unlearn is to not prepare a script for greetings and niceties to project a certain first impression. As I begin to attempt to live the life of the person I imagine myself to be, I had to let go of my introverted habits. I realized that preparing for every interaction only perpetuates my disappointment that I am bad a social interactions. Since it is impossible to control how words will be received by the other, it is only troublesome to orchestrate first impressions. I realized that it is useless and does not amount event to a net positive because of the amount of stress I am putting myself into even before the interactions happen. Once again, it is my overthinking brain, trying to anticipate what will happen to gain a semblance of control in my mind. It is a type of over-reassuring myself that I will be okay if I just prepare, which is only an illusion.

So I'm beginning to let that aspect of myself go bit by bit, one encounter after another. Consciously doing it led to a kind of flow, where interactions begin to create its own rhythm. What I see as "stage cues" before begin to transform into "dynamics." All of my preconceived notions about each person disappeared and they begin to seem like themselves without my judgment. As I let myself be, I opened myself to an experience where I start to see the human in every person. This is not to say that I used to see every person as a character that I created in my head, but to realize that any form of preparation before every encounter will always be washed away by the fluidity of conversations and the waves of body languages. My mind stopped analyzing everything. Nervousness never visited and anxiety did not summon a clumsy response I would have done if I were as stiff as a bamboo.

I would love to continue down this road. I feel like another sense of freedom has awakened in me. I am slowly becoming someone who I wanted to be.