I’m starting to become obsessed with labels and expectations in my personal life, and I’m over it.
It’s been so frustrating to not be able to define certain aspects of my life, including myself, so I’m going to stop fighting it. Right now, I’m not entirely sure who I am and what I want to do in my life, and that’s perfectly fine.
I’ve talked about this before, but I’ve lived my life being defined by labels from others and even myself. I’m the older sister and a child of divorce. I’m a Cancer. I’m a hard worker. I’m a writer. I’m a reader. The list goes on.
These labels are still technically a part of me, but I’m trying to detach my life meaning from those descriptors. I’m still defining my life as I have for decades, and I don’t want to be that way anymore.
I feel like I haven’t let myself find new ways to describe myself, and that feels like a disservice to myself and all the work I’ve done especially over the past six months to a year, so I’m going to work on eliminating labels, at least for now.
I don’t need to be known as a certain type of person anymore. That now feels limiting to me. I’m going to start embracing all different aspects of myself as opposed to just the ones I have already embraced. I need to own all of the aspects of myself, and right now that means ignoring the labels I’ve previously used to define myself.
Along that same line of thought, I’m removing labels from my work on this blog. I feel like I have to post at certain times on certain days at a certain cadence to really be successful. Even if my blog could be more traditionally successful if I did those things, right now that feels really limiting to me so I’m dropping those expectations from myself.
I’m going to start posting whenever I feel like it, even if it’s not the “right” day or time. I’m going to share more about my setbacks, resistance, questioning beliefs, etc. because it feels like that’s not what a “successful” blogger does. I’m going to be more me, once I start figuring out what that even means.
Basically, I’m going to stop defining myself by labels because I feel like so many expectations come up because of those without me even realizing it.
I’ve been questioning a lot about my life lately, and basically, using the same labels I have since birth isn’t helping. I keep falling back on them even if I know they don’t fully define me anymore. So it’s time for all of them to go.
I may be seen as a bad blogger or friend or worker or what have you, but at least I’ll be authentic and vulnerable and real on a bigger scale.
If you struggle with labels in your life as well, try letting all of them go and see what happens.
Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash