Don’t ever give up who you are
- Kyle Snyder: Live on Purpose
- August 16, 2024
- 590
“Life is short. Break the rules, love truly, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes you smile.”
—Mark Twain
I’m in love with the last part of our quote because how many times do we change who we are to impress people we don’t even like? Will Rogers put it like this: “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.” Rogers is exactly right. How many of us give away a part of ourselves to fit in?
For me, I kind of lost myself during COVID. The shutdown was good for me personally. I took care of myself, and life was going at a slower pace. Then everything went back to normal, and instead of keeping a good attitude about myself, I gave in to the negativity of the world around me: the “us against them” mindset or the people who wore masks vs those who didn’t. The whole “no one can tell me what to do” mentality, it got old in a hurry. On the other hand, I wasn’t doing my part. See, only I could control my attitude, and I failed to do so.
I gave my smile away because I got tired of everyone around being so negative, and I just gave up. I didn’t want to write anymore because how could I tell you how to be positive when I couldn’t? But I get counseling and that really helped me change my attitude, and I would say after nine months I got my smile back. I did what I could to help me get it back. I took the long way home from work, enjoyed time alone with God, wore socks that didn’t always match and my socks now all have cartoon characters on them.
What makes you happy? I don’t believe we should do whatever we want, but I do believe we worry too much about what other people may think. Worrying what people may think is really selfish when you really think about it because it turns the focus on us.
Let me give you a dose of reality — people don’t have time to think about what we are doing because they are much too busy worrying what we might be thinking about them. Do what makes you smile and life will be much brighter.