Written by: Aisha Saintiche, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
I want you to do something for me. Close your eyes and think about all the things that have impacted you negatively over the last week, the last month, the last year! Whether it was said to you or something you heard someone say about you or a vibe you picked up from someone or just simply a space you’ve been in for a while, how did it make you feel physically, mentally, psychologically even spiritually? How did you address it? How did you get past it? Are you even past it?
Cause here is real talk. While many of us often say we don’t care about how others perceive us, how people receive us, what people think about us and what people say about us – the truth is we do care, and it does have an impact on us. Do you know how many times I used to find myself at the receiving end of someone’s negativity, their microaggression, their purposeful exclusion or their outright dismissal of me and acted like it didn’t bother me and that I didn’t care, yet all I did was play it back in my head over and over again, except this time I changed the outcome to how I had desired it to play out. I KNOW I’m not the only one who has done that before!
Think about this dichotomy. As we rear our children (whether you are the parent, guardian, or part of the village) what do we always tell them? ‘Do not allow other people’s negativity to impact you’. ‘People may say hurtful and mean things, but their sentiments or opinion about you are their own’. ‘Love yourself’. ‘Be confident’ – and the list goes on. We drill endless positive energy into our children so they are grounded, self-assured and have high regard for themselves, almost creating this protective layer around them where negativity cannot penetrate. Yet as we get older and become more in tune to our surroundings and fully aware of the world around us, the lessons that we have worked so hard to teach our kids is somehow null and void in how we take in negativity. What is the cause of this shift?
Disclaimer: Everything that I am about to say from here to the end of this article is my opinion and my opinion only. What I say is not grounded in evidence only personal experience and observation.
What often happens is that as we get older, we begin to create more labels for ourselves - We are mothers, wives, friends, lovers, girlfriends, doctors, engineers, pilots, florists, and the list goes on. With the creation of every label comes a list of expectations that are associated with that title. And within these expectations are additional expectations of how we are to behave, or present ourselves, what we are supposed to say or not say, how we should show up, what is deemed acceptable in accordance with our age, race, gender, ability, geographic location, etc. The rules and created expectations that we are required to navigate through are endless, and yet we wonder why we often feel bogged down and heavy.
How has the burden of these labels that have been placed on you or that you’ve created helped you? Are they helping you? Or are they hindering you? Are they creating space for you to self-actualize, self-discover and ebb and flow through change? Or are they keeping you restrained mentally and physically?
You see, the idea of emancipating yourself from these labels isn’t about declaring your freedom to those who wish to or have created this disguised pretty box for you to fit into. Au contraire. The power of emancipating yourself sits with the power to change your inner dialogue that challenges an existing narrative that says you are required to be, act, look, speak, and/or live a certain way.
I’m a creature of habit and as such thrive in spaces where there is some level of routine, rules, and boundaries. While this has served me well in many aspects of my life, it has also created a very limiting self-narrative around what I believed I had the capacity to do. For so long I believed that my success was contingent on when other people deemed me ready – and so I did what many of us do. I went back to school, got my Masters, worked hard, and waited patiently for others to take notice of my readiness for ‘growth’. I conducted myself in a way that I felt would make others feel comfortable with who I was (and as I look back, I can now see how I diminished who I was in the name of other people’s comfort), I went the extra mile as a sign of good faith and waited patiently for the time where someone would deem me ‘ready’ for growth. And you know what happened? nothing. I was told that I hadn’t demonstrated my skills set and qualifications appropriately. And that I needed a bit more time in my current position before I was deemed “ready” to move up. Now let me be 100 with you – a girl was MAD. I was mad because I didn’t get the position. I was mad because I didn’t know what else I could have done to demonstrate my readiness. But what made me the maddest (and this is something that only came to be through my own personal work) was that I allowed the measuring stick of others to be my measuring stick.
Do you know the outcome of using someone else’s standards to assess your readiness for greatness? You risk diminishing your potential and assessing yourself against a scale that ends at your starting point! I will say it again and I want you to sit with it for a minute.
Assessing yourself against someone else’s standards may risk you diminishing your actual potential.
It wasn’t until I intentionally (and not just in words but through actions) emancipated myself from what I thought I needed to be and stepped into who I was, did growth and elevation happen. I had to unbecome who I felt others needed me to be so that they would accept me and see me as worthy for growth so that I could make room to fill my own cup up and establish my own baseline for what growth and success looked like.
When I look back at that moment, I’m grateful for the outcome ‒ because it forced me to come out of that pretty box that was made to look so pretty, but in fact, wasn’t big enough to hold who I really was. And so, as you continue your journey, think about the labels and narrative that you hold about yourself, that may be taking up high-quality real estate that is intended for top-rated self-identity.
Aisha Saintiche, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazin
Aisha Saintiche is a certified Health Coach and the founder and owner of MetoMoi Health. With over fifteen years of experience in Mental Health, Accessibility and Diversity and Inclusion, Aisha has used her experience as a strategic advisor and health coach to understand the complexity and intersectionality of the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual barriers that keep people from achieving their optimized health and wellness.
Aisha also holds a Masters in Public Policy Administration and Law, as well as a certification in Change Management, Advanced Crisis Intervention and Counselling and Health Coaching. She is also an Integral Master for the Canadian Olympic Committee of Canada, and most recently she became a Published Author.
Always seeking opportunities to bring about change, she is also an active member and Board of Director for the Woman Abuse Council of Toronto (WomanACT) and the Board Chair for Afiwi Groove School.
