how being afraid of "showing off" is stifling your growth
- Salma Summers
- Nov 9, 2019
- 2 min read
“don’t be a showoff” the kids would say.
any sighting of anyone shining a little too bright was guaranteed to be met with laughter or worse bullying.
this is where most of our programming begins. when we are young and impressionable and really have no clue how to defend ourselves.
we all know what grade school is like. kids trying to fit in. everyone wants to sit at the “cool” table and be accepted. unfortunately, this is where we learned some of our most destructive beliefs around self-image.
one of them is to never be a showoff.
showoffs were ostracized at all the schools i went to and i went to a lot of different schools.
yet, it showed up everywhere i went and it was considered a huge insult.
at this very young age of 5/6/7/8, we learned that being ourselves could potentially get us in trouble.
naturally, as children, we love to show off. we love to bring forth the new move we learned or the new toy we got or whatever cool thing we are experiencing.
but we learn very early on that these things are called “showing off” and that showing off is not okay.
you may be wondering what schoolyard bullies and showing off has to do with anything.
well for starters, this is where the V-word (validation) was really ingrained in us.
we didn’t want to be made fun of, we knew that we were too fragile for that and so our smart minds decided the best course of action was to trade our individuality for validation.
which meant to shrink our true selves and swap it out for a persona that was “tough” or a “pushover” or sometimes both.
but for the most part, we swing to one side of the two defense mechanisms, overly hard (closed off, push people away) or overly soft (too clingy, people-pleasing).
and these two defense mechanisms are magnets for one another.
hence, dysfunctional adult lives.
and at the bottom of this all, lies a rotten foundation. all built on seeking validation. and evading being true and honest because that means being vulnerable and takes us back to the fear of schoolyard bullies. regardless of which form they came in; an older sibling, a parent, a teacher, a classmate. that doesn’t matter.
because if you open your eyes, you’ll see it everywhere.
it is the reason why we play small in our lives.
the reason why we refuse to be honest and communicate our needs directly.
the reason why we stay at jobs we hate or in relationships that are one-sided.
most of us gave up our true self so we wouldn’t be called weird, or nerdy, or be the target for the school bully (or bullies).
but we aren’t helpless kids on the playground anymore.
we are adults now and we have power. we have the power to love ourselves and seek out relationships that serve our highest good. we have the power to choose what we allow into our space and more importantly, who we allow into our lives.
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