Or how to redefine the process of desiring to make an impression in self-interest to making an impression as an expression of what’s best for all
There was a very supportive audio that brought up a relevant word for me to look at and that’s ‘impress’ and impression, where the question was brought up of investigating who we are and where we stand in relation to this word.
I’ve realized that there is this existent undercurrent and constant intent within me of wanting to leave an impression, a ‘mark’ on a person no matter how menial or profound our paths or interactions are. That’s me then looking at creating an impression upon them, which nowadays relates more to in any possible way create an opening for others to see things a little bit more different in life, where I can possibly plant a seed to question ourselves more, to desire to learn more about ourselves as human beings – this is based on the kind of person I am creating as myself, a person that can actually have something meaningful to always share whether through words, actions, or sheer presence, that’s the kind of ‘impression’ I’d like to develop as an expression of myself. I have to admit it can become a ‘drive’ in me that likes to dig into the deeper dimensions within individuals whenever I get the chance to do so, and be vulnerable myself because I also see that ‘masking’ ourselves through pretension in wanting to be accepted or liked through lies/deception/masks is doing nothing more than recreating the false-sense of ‘individualities’ that we’ve taken as a normal human trait, which are all based on preferences, likes, personalities, cultural influences and the rest of it that are nothing else but disguises, ‘tags’ that we’ve adopted in order to ‘differentiate’ ourselves from one another.
But even if this ‘drive’ seems supportive, I also have to be prudent and moderate because sometimes I can get a bit out of hand with being a bit too unconventional in situations where others might not be entirely understanding ‘where I am coming from ‘and that can cause a ‘wrong impression’ that would take some time to walk through with others, and sometimes there are no possibilities or ‘second opportunities’ to do so – therefore, I have to remind myself of moderating myself, my expression, being patient in considering others as well, yet without compromising myself either, but developing the real me as an expression that stands in support of myself and so possibly stand as an inspiration or example for others to consider doing the same as well.
I’d like to make a case of looking at the possibilities and ability we have of leaving an impression on others that is more meaningful in the sense of ‘who we are’ as human beings, our substance – not our disguise, our masks, what we look like or wear or what we ‘carry around’ with us – but allow our own thoughts, words and actions speak for themselves. That’s the kind of person that I’ve been working on creating as myself, but this wasn’t always ‘the way’ it’s been.
I also have had and still walk through the other programming in the word ‘impress’ where there was almost an inherent experience in me where I saw myself also as having a potential to ‘impress’ or ‘be naturally charming’ which would then create a form of benefit with other people – but even as subtle as it was, it became also a reason to deliberately challenge my own image and do something a bit more ‘radical’ that could put to test this aspect of myself based on image. I shaved my head and then have tested out who I am when I am not relying on a sense of ‘beauty’ to present myself to others – or any other artifices – but keep it as simple and natural as can be. This is not me making a statement that it is superficial to have hair or do makeup or anything like that, I did believe some of that at some point but I have decided to not compare or judge others, this is about me and a particular path I am walking in a very personal way when it comes to how I have decided to present myself, which in my starting point and view is a way to ‘get past’ the appearance –even if we can’t ever get ‘rid’ of an appearance per se, we can decide to challenge it in ways that are not harmful or hurtful ‘towards others’ but a way to test oneself, and to me shaving my head has been one of them, plus letting go of a desire for recognition at the same time at an egotistical level, but more in constantly letting go of any pretense and just be, which is quite a challenge at times and it’s more of a fine balance between all of these points that becomes a constant practice.
Talking about ‘desiring to impress’ others from a point of inferiority in my past. I tried to impress people that I was interested on having a particular relationship with, which meant my whole starting point toward them was of desire, of seeing or comparing myself to them and assessing I was ‘inferior’ therefore, I had to ‘impress’ others through – in my case – knowledge and information in order to be liked or accepted by particular people. This includes personality traits that I believed would be able to ‘be liked’ by males particularly and of course this led me to live more for ‘others’ than for myself. There were times where I got so ‘sucked into’ a relationship where I lost my sense of individuality and my own life, as I was living for others, upgrading my personality ‘based on others’ preferences’ and desirable traits. This is definitely Not the way to live, it becomes an experience of being ‘racing’ towards something all the time, fearing losing that one person or ‘thing’ that one is getting/obtaining through constantly having to ‘impress’ or ‘keep impressing’ to maintain a particular relationship.
This was exhausting, not only for me but because I’d see the other person would also fall into the same game and I pondered why we were believing that we just ‘weren’t enough’ for each other… that’s the kind of relationships that of course have to come to an end because we are not being self-honest with oneself in who we really are and being vulnerable in rather acknowledging each one’s flaws and weaknesses in order to strengthen them in each other as a form of support or natural outflow of being in a supportive relationship. That becomes a richer process and it is definitely liberating to create relationships where we share ourselves as we are, without any pretense, without trying to be something that we are not, because what do we know if we transform ourselves for the sake of ‘a relationship’ with a particular person? We are not living for ourselves, we are entirely existing in a constant inferiority spot that becomes a constant experience of fear, of jealousy, of comparison if one is not yet valuing oneself as an equal to that other individual.
Therefore the whole desire to ‘impress’ in itself already rings an alarm that we can use as a flag-point to instead ask ourselves: where am I perceiving myself as ‘not good enough’? Where and toward who am I comparing myself when believing that I must ‘impress them’ and beat other competition, so that I can be the ‘chosen one’ in this situation or within a certain relationship? Why am I allowing myself to compromise who I am for the sake of creating a relationship with a person? And then, pushing oneself to be self-honest to see how if we tolerate this starting point of inferiority and wanting to impress others through presenting ourselves as something that we are not, we eventually get caught up in our own lies and the deception eventually catches upon us.
It reminds me of a movie that I watched last year called ‘A Perfect Man’ where this aspiring writer sees himself as incapable of writing a good story that could get published, so he finds the manuscript of a dead person and turns it into ‘his first novel’, which gives him the fame and recognition he was looking for, eventually leading him to have ‘the perfect life’ and his ‘perfect relationship’; but all of the pretense and lies eventually catch up to him as reality knocks the door. That movie precisely left me considering how far we can take ourselves in order to be ‘living’ a lie, and how much of a burden this pretension becomes just because one wasn’t wise enough to rather develop oneself, practice and create the necessary skills in order to eventually master something or get to be ‘good at’ doing or being something as an actual process of self-creation, instead of jumping into a ‘quick fix’ based on self-deception and lies, because of believing that one wasn’t good enough without ‘extra magic’ which in this case I’d refer to magic as all the characters, personalities, ‘extra traits’ that we might act out/fake in order to impress others.
So what I did to walk through from this ‘desire to impress’ from a starting point of self-interest – like acquiring a particular relationship – to the ability to make an impression on others in a natural way or as an expression of who I am is precisely linked to walking this process from consciousness to self-awareness. It is about letting go of one’s self-judgment, fears or insecurities and so desires based on a rather unfortunate common perception of seeing ourselves as inferior, seeing ourselves as ‘not good enough’ – which leads us to constantly devalue who we are and seek ways to be accepted, to be liked, to be loved, to be ‘irreplaceable’ in a relationship – yet, it actually gets oneself in very tricky situations where we may become ‘the perfect fit’ that we’ve modeled ourselves to according to someone’s desires, and in doing so not only do we trap ourselves to ‘always be all of that’ for that one person, but we also cage themselves in becoming entirely dependent on us and believing that all of those ‘desires’ they aspired to obtain are real traits or are ‘realistic’ in the way that one is compromising oneself to portray or act like ‘for another’. This probably happens more often than I am aware of, and what happens is that it turns into an unsustainable relationship – as it was in any case – where one eventually can’t keep up with the ‘act,’ because it’s no different to being inflating a bubble until it pops – and all bubbles have to burst! That’s a fact of life and a very necessary one, because all that ‘inflates’ those bubbles is everything that we fuel within our minds as ideas, beliefs, perceptions, judgments, comparisons, fears, desires that we impose onto ourselves as ‘who we are’ and ‘what defines us.’
So, once that one walks through a process of dropping or shedding these layers of self-compromise, what is left is ‘the real me’ that I can then focus on redefining, on nurturing, growing, expanding as a myself, as the real being that I am that goes beyond a particular image or façade created ‘for others’. In this I have in fact found my own skin and a sense of individuality that I can then honor as myself because it does change everything about oneself when we decide to no longer feed one’s ego in every step that we take in our lives, and instead decide to change ‘what we are all about’ as the kind of person that rather stands as a point of change in relation to what has been accepted as ‘normal’ or ‘normal-lies’ (normalized) that in my particular life and experience, I have definitely taken on the point of ‘rattling the cages of the caged’ as in deciding to physically as a ‘first impression’ have an unusual presentation which is that of shaving my head which I’ve been doing up to this month for 7 years now and it’s been quite assisting to me to be honest considering how much I had also debased myself according to beliefs on my appearance and so challenging myself further with removing one aspect that people would usually associate with ‘beauty’ or ‘sexuality’, I then present myself in a way where I make a clear statement of what I am about, of what I am ‘into.’ This has become a source of conversations throughout the years that open up different ways to explain why I do it and what is it that I work on or explain my ‘views’ to random people in various contexts. That has been cool but it’s after all not so much about how it is received upon others, because I am also aware that it sometimes might alienate people that might be in their particular process and position a bit judgmental about appearance, but that’s entirely up to each one and it’s understandable as well based on how ingrained our parameters of beauty or presentation extend to.
But beyond making it about facing my image towards people, after all of these years of having worked on various reactions and upon seeing the plethora of reactions it might cause, I’ve learned to let go of focusing on ‘how others see me’ and instead make it my own, see it as my own physical representation of the principles I am dedicating my life to embody and continue expanding on.
I’ve also questioned myself if this makes me too ‘image driven’ at the same time as I know it does create a particular ‘impact’ or ‘impression’ on people at a first glance level, but it is still then only an image – what I however have liked over the years is how this particular self-created difference as a ‘haircut’ or the lack thereof can open up conversations that I would have to get to in a longer period of time with people, sometimes it becomes a catalyst to jump straight to explaining about this process and set of principles if the person is willing to hear the reasoning behind it, but ultimately I do it as myself.
If we can make an impression or ‘stand out’ in the crowd then, let’s stand out for all the good reasons like being acknowledged as an individual that can be an example of a different way of living, not only in the ‘external ways’ but most importantly in the internal ways, to leave a mark and create an impression that can assist other people in possibly discovering more about ourselves as individuals beyond ‘first impressions’ and facades and the rest of cover-ups we create through our minds that become like layers that we then have to get rid of – one by one – in order to eventually get to the core of ourselves and from there, be able to decide who we really want to be, what kind of person do I want to create as myself based on what is best for all and considering self-honesty.
This is then a much more meaningful and honorable process that in itself is already ‘making a stand’ and requires no particular emphasis to ‘create a good impression’ on others, because our thoughts, words and deeds will speak by themselves, by ourselves, and that’s the kind of expression that will create an impression by default, an expression that I have to keep fine tuning, working on, deconstructing and reconstructing, which is my own impression or imprinting of words, attitudes and actions that are beneficial for me, so that I can stand as the better version of the that can in turn assist many others more to break out of the pretense and inferiority in order to discover the genuine self that exists in all of us as a potential yet to be discovered and developed.
Thanks for reading
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