For the longest time, I have been going through life trying to get as many people to like me as possible. It made me feel as though I was progressing as a person and that I was on the right track in life whenever I walked through a hallway and saw people I knew who waved back.
I constantly made good-hearted jokes about people close to me, which made people laugh. I figured that if I were always at 100% with my humor and clownishness, then everyone would like me. I even turned some of my vulnerabilities and insecurities into jokes, which led to more laughter.
But some of my jokes wouldn’t land and it began to hurt my self-worth. However, this was only with a few people.
In a room of 10 people who laughed at my jokes, it would irk me that one or two people wouldn’t join in. Or those couple of people would look shocked or make weird faces at my joke. It made me think that those couple of people did not like me and I still think that.
Despite having to put work and school first, when people stop laughing at your jokes and paying you compliments, your insecurities creep up and your mind will gravitate to those things instead of your tasks at hand.
It was not just the people who would not laugh at my jokes that bothered me. I would think about all the times that people made plans right in front of me to go places or do things, but not invite me. Or if I invited myself and was either politely denied or just ignored when going. I would think about whenever I had a crush on someone, I counted the calories of what I ate, worked out harder than usual and criticized my haphazard makeup job to cover the acne scars that guys wouldn’t find attractive.
After a while, I became quiet and isolated.
That did not help me.
I decided to go back to telling jokes, but instead of trying to amuse others, it would only be jokes that made me laugh. I still worked out, put makeup on and dressed pretty, but I would not try to overexert energy on my looks.
Instead of being sad, I became frustrated, always thinking why don’t they like me? That frustration told me to not be quiet and sad, but instead to ignore those who ignored me.
Whoever did not laugh, did not laugh. And I didn’t care.
For people out there who think that they need to be either quiet or loud enough, skinny enough, pretty enough or smile enough to please others on the off chance that they like you back, do not give into those thoughts or those people.
As long as you are not harming anyone, keep doing what you have been doing, especially if you are already happy. Having everyone in the room look at you and smile does not matter, especially if you have to tear yourself down and reconstruct a watered-down yet palatable version of yourself.