Peach came to me with a delighted look on her face after receiving a compliment from a friend who told her, “I wish I had your life. You’re so cool.” This surprised Peach who, of course, spends time thinking the same thoughts about others.
She repeated the words several times, testing my reaction, seeking validation and convincing herself that it could be true. ‘Cool’ isn’t a concept she’d tried on before. Did it fit? Could she pull it off? We are what we believe we are, but how do we know what to believe?
I wish I could say it’s only tweens and teens who absorb the opinions of others in order to define themselves. But too many times as an adult I’ve caught myself feeling good or bad based on another person’s criticism or compliment.
In my book, Tween You and Me: A Preteen Guide To Becoming Your Best Self, I advocate for girls to know themselves, be themselves, and love themselves. What I don’t highlight is how challenging the first step is.
Figuring out who we are is lifelong work. We’re like a slow-cooked meal that needs extended time to simmer before emerging from the pot in the form of palatable dish. Becoming a mature person who understands herself takes patience and practice. It requires us to spend time on the inside, releasing the flavor of us, bit by bit.
A sage will advise you to ‘Listen to your heart’ or your gut, or some such organ, to guide you through life. But if we haven’t established a relationship with our innards, this advice is useless. We’re likely to choose the more convenient but tenuous path of adopting the world’s idea of who we should be. Seeing ourselves in the mirror of the world can be helpful, but the world can only show us how we are. It can’t define who we are.
Certain Native American tribes had naming ceremonies, sometimes beginning at birth. The name reflected a virtue the parents hoped for the baby to have. This would be replaced in adolescence in response to a strength for which the child was known. As an adult, another name might be granted to reflect an expectation for the person to live up to. The process of identification was fluid.
The goal in getting to know yourself isn’t to land on one comprehensive definition. The goal is to become skilled enough at turning inward that you can see, understand, and act in accordance with your true vision and values as they apply to any given moment.
As parents, we want this for our children. We want to know that they’re armored with self-confidence and immune to the judgmental world. We want for them what we still don’t possess for ourselves 100% of the time. The best we can do is meet them where they’re at, not trying to change anything, and not expecting adult-level responses to the feedback that hammers them every day from all directions.
I offered Peach an observation of my own. “I see a girl who is growing and learning every day. I see a girl who is a good friend and loves her family. I see a girl who wonders about things with an imaginative mind and works tirelessly at creating. This girl has ideas worth sharing and a future that’s bright. And I think that makes you pretty cool.”
Peach smiled at this and said, “Thanks. I think I can see that too.”
Chaos & Clarity 