Not so Incognito

Why do we allow other people to decide who we are and what we are like? 

From a very young age, we allow OTHER people to decide what kind of personality we have, who we get along with, or if we fit in. I am so bothered by the fact that I can look back to my elementary years and remember the rumors that society made me believe even from such a young age.

For example:

  "I am not very book smart. I won't fit in with the all of the intelligent students at BYU. I am a very bad reader. I hate reading. I am not good at it."

- Thought I have made myself believe.

When I break down WHY I am thinking this about myself I think back to the small events that made me believe this about myself. One in which is POPCORN READING. Guys, I am a passionate HATER for POPCORN READING. I think it is the devils creation and should be removed from classroom settings. 

Just kidding. 

Well, kinda. 

Popcorn reading was one of the worst parts of my day at school. I was the kind of person who when doing snake reading, where you just go up and down the isles, would count how many people until my turn and then match count how many paragraphs until me. THEN I would literally practice reading the paragraph probably seven times before it was my turn. In return, I wasn't actually following along, I was primarily focused on the fact that I DID NOT want to make a complete idiot of myself trying to pronounce a hard word or stuttering. I was extremely anxious about what my classmates would believe about me if I couldn't read profound enough, or fast enough, or loud enough, with a confident voice. 

I never fully got to appreciate the art of the literature and I never did well on the tests because the whole time we were reading I was too worried about how I would be perceived. Now a lot of this was my problem, and a lot of it is not the fault of popcorn reading itself, but what is the problem is that the stereotypes developed from popcorn reading in elementary stuck with me MY WHOLE LIFE up until graduation.

As some of you know, by reading my old posts or knowing me personally, I transferred to a new high school for the first three months of my senior year. Although I returned to my Bronco home shortly after attending Highland High School, I learned a valuable lesson in those three months. A lesson that I continually have to remind myself of. 

Blackfoot, Idaho is a small town where everyone knows everyone and reputations/stereotypes tend to stick to you for longer than they should. Heck, Blackfoot is so set in one locked down mindset they can't even handle the small changes of new businesses opening up! (controversial topic, sorry) But it reflects not only in the community changing and growing, but in understanding that people change and grow as well. 

I grew up taking the AP classes, studying moderately, and doing my work sufficiently. But I feel like, because I didn't make it to the banana split party in fifth grade from passing of my multiplication chart, because I never had enough AR points to go to the parties, because I rarely scored Advanced on the ISAT... I didn't fit in with my high school classmates who had accomplished so much from the start. These kids were in GT growing up and I was still doing addition with my fingers. I put this cap on my intellectual potential. I believed that I was only capable of what would get me by. I would never be as smart as the people around me. There was no way I would score higher than an 80 percent on any of my tests. 

But transferring to Highland was the weirdest experience (divinely inspired by God I must say). Highland was a HUGE school, no one knew me. I had NO REPUTATION. I got to be WHATEVER I wanted to be. And it was interesting because even then, what the people around me thought of me still impacted me. 

Those AP classes were nothing scholastically different then the classes I was taking at my previous school, but my performance and attitude was so different. I was no longer the ditzy blonde in the class. No one knew that I sucked at popcorn reading. No one knew that at my last school I would be the VERY LAST person to go to if you had a question about the Unit we were studying. No one knew anything about me and the interesting thing was that people started coming to me. My test scores were higher. I gained this newborn confidence in myself. I knew that I was not the dumb friend. I was not the joke of the classroom. I was smart. I had a profound way of thinking that deserved to be appreciated by myself at the very least. 

But I allowed myself to believe what others thought of me. I was living to be the Taylor Smiddy that everyone else thought I was, not the Taylor that I KNEW I WAS.

Recently, I have seen how this continues to be an issue. People are never going to stop assuming your character. Some people would look at my Instagram and assume that I was "just another person looking for likes on her photo or another follower to her account." People have assumed that I blog because apparently I want more attention to myself. People assume that the words I share, the posts are a false painting of an image I am trying to create for myself. 

But, I know that its not. 

This is me.

I am an extremely open book. I find immense joy in sharing my experiences, not because I want everyone to think a certain way about me or look up to me. I want to share my experiences because I love writing. I love learning and every time I analyze my experiences I connect dots of things that my Heavenly Father is trying to teach me. I write for me. I write honestly and openly about my feelings and challenges and blessings and gratitude, because I truly believe and I have witnessed blessings come not only to myself, but to people who have messaged me telling me that my writing helped them and they could feel the very REAL love and passion I had behind my writing. 

My career aspirations are to help people who can't help themselves alone. My only desire is to help people understand that they are not alone, because when I came to understand that even if I don't have one single person in my life, I will always have my Saviour, changed my life. 

We are not alone. 

No matter what.

Where sin runs deep, his love runs deeper. He will never stop reaching out to us. Even when we make the same mistake over and over and over again. Its exhausting that so often we get stuck in the mindset of neglecting the power of change in peoples lives. 

We believe that if someone we went to school with forever who never ever would have shown interest in religion, suddenly posts a picture of God, they are fake and we believe its too good to be true because WE could never picture it. But change is so real. People make mistakes, their mistakes do not define them. Just because someone is optimistic and caring in hard times doesn't make them fake.

Be the person YOU know you are. Share the things YOU feel even if everyone thinks your bluffing. Do what makes YOU happy! And one of my goals recently has been to eliminate the things that make you feel anything but happiness. You do not have to live incognito. You should be your best YOU! 

Don't believe the lies that you allow yourself to come up with about yourself. 

I have recently started to believe so many lies about myself, about my worth, about my potential... Satan had so much power to captivate myself into discouragement. He does that. And he'd do it in the slyest of ways, like scrolling through Instagram and seeing a picture of a beautiful old friend of mine, who I know is an amazing daughter of God, who has inspired me and honestly been the most genuine amazing woman in my life, but instead of being inspired by her greatness, I would feel discouraged. I would feel so far from being a woman of worth like the friends I had. 

I had to reset. To start over. I had to make sure my Instagram feed was only full of posts who made me feel uplifted and the thing is, it has nothing to do with anyone else! The lies we believe about ourselves are a constant battle between Satan and the influences he has on our thoughts. It is not the fault of anyone else's and it is something that we have to overcome ourselves. 

Make sure you are putting yourself in a place, an environment where you can easily be happy. Where you can easily feel peace an joy.

Don't live incognito. Just be you.

Escape the lies that Satan makes you believe. Just be you.

Don't compare yourself to those around you. Just be you.

Forget the things that other imperfect people might say, we are all learning together. Just be you.

Don't try to impress anyone, but yourself and your God. Just be you.

And allow yourself to be the happiest you.

(This is all advise to myself, recorded so I can remember the things God is teaching me in my trails)