Whatsup Exceptionalist?!

I’ve got some philosophy I’d like to share with you. 

Not allowing yourself to be yourself in social situations or when you make decisions can have many consequences. 

Layers of inauthenticity can create an entire world built to avoid loneliness—a fragile house of cards, dependent on external validation while leaving the internal self empty.

As if writing a story for a protagonist in a fiction book. You can make that story appealing for readers looking from the outside. 

The person behind the pen is the real you—the one you face each night, the one who must live with the long-term consequences of living inauthentically.

That’s regardless if you choose to accept and take responsibility for it or not. 

As someone with ADHD, it's common to struggle with people-pleasing and forming a true identity. 

My mind is often scattered and ungrounded, making it easy to be agreeable and blend into different groups without much difficulty.

This creates a tendency to lead me to adopt identities that align with groupthink rather than embracing my authentic self.

While "being yourself" is often discussed in a general sense, I believe it's especially important for those of us with ADHD or people-pleasing tendencies to discuss this. 

By the end of this newsletter, my goal is that, whether you have ADHD or not, or are a people pleaser or not, you can feel more confident in letting your true self exist freely in the world. 

One of the main reasons I think we ADHD'ers and people pleasers tend to live through this aforementioned “character” so much is because we are terrified of polarization.

When you spend so much time crafting a character designed to please everyone, trying to be real—expressing your disagreement, disobedience, or outright disgust—becomes much more challenging.

These are the uglier sides of you, the ones more likely to be disliked. When someone is offended by this or doesn’t like it, it’s nearly impossible not to take it personally. 

The ego of your manufactured character is hollow and fragile, so you perceive being disliked as a flaw in the persona you’ve built. This threatens your self-worth tremendously.

As a result, it can be extremely difficult to regulate the negative emotions that come from this and prevent yourself from spiraling into self-judgment and criticism.

Add "rejection sensitivity" into the mix, something we ADHD'ers struggle with, and it's a recipe for a flat-out emotional crisis.

The courage to be disliked, to be polarizing, comes from a deep inner strength—a strength that, in my opinion, can only be developed through action, radical responsibility, and intentional experimentation.

This is certainly easier said than done. But in my opinion, not only is it possible to develop this strength, but if you do not cultivate the ability to be yourself. You will never truly live for yourself. 

If you don’t write your story, someone else will. 

With that in mind, here are 3 steps I've implemented that have helped me become more rooted in my authentic self and that I think you can use to help guide you in your process. 

1. Figure Out Who You Are
2. Practice Being That Person 
3. Detest Arrogance. 

Figure Out Who You Are 

Who you really are is often discovered not while lying in the grass on a sunny day with a pen and paper in hand (though that can be a good start and effective in its own right).

But rather in your most difficult and undesirable moments and when no one is looking at you. 

When you’re not performing. 

In times of grief, betrayal, disappointment, sadness, depression, and anxiety. 

When these negative emotions are felt intensely, the most undesirable yet authentic sides of who we are tend to leak out in a way that sometimes we aren’t even conscious of without paying close attention. 

Some of you may recognize this side of our personalities as what the famous psychologist Carl Jung regards as the “ shadow ”.

The shadow is all of the negative and undesirable traits about ourselves that we repress and hide from society to be accepted with minimal struggle within our cultures. 

One of the most important parts of my journey to discover myself was to understand my shadow and accept it without judgment. Understanding that every human has one, some are just better at hiding it than others. 

This shadow side isn't the only aspect of yourself worth exploring to achieve self-acceptance and integration into the world. However, it is, I believe, the part of us we're most unaware of and often willfully ignore.

One way to test this is by asking a friend or family member about their strengths and weaknesses the next time you see them.

9 times out of 10 people are going to be able to recall and articulate their strengths easier and more effectively than their weaknesses. 

This is a natural part of human nature.

The less undesirable we appear, the more likely we are to form tribes and integrate safely, protecting ourselves from outside threats that are more dangerous when we're alone.

The issue here regarding self-actualization ( being yourself ) though is that what makes us more unique tends to be realized through expressions of the shadow, not the tepid niceties we often express through our well-crafted personas.

These are often unoriginal and impossible to differentiate people with outside of their physical appearances. 

"Surface-level conversations," " fake niceness," and "political correctness" are often unchallenging and meaningless exchanges meant to keep life sailing smoothly without disrupting the status quo.

People pleasers like us our experts at this already so no need to dive into detail on that further. 

Effective change comes from integrating the aspects of ourselves that aren't so "pleasant" or "nice" into a productive strategy for dealing with people and forming relationships that are more authentically aligned with the real you.

Because the real you isn’t just okay with everything all the time.

The real you has disagreements.

The real you has boundaries that should not so easily be trampled upon.

One of the most crucial aspects of exploring your shadow is understanding that, when properly harnessed, it can protect you from threats even more effectively than the "niceties" of people-pleasing.

If I asked you what the most valuable resource we have in life is what would be your answer? 

My answer is time.

Time is the only thing in this life we cannot get back after we’ve spent it.

We also have no guarantee of how much we have of it.

Death is inevitable, and we don't know when it will come. So, wasting the precious time we have isn't wise.

When properly integrated, the shadow can save you countless hours by avoiding unnecessary and nonsensical relationships.

For example, when we see red flags we can act on them immediately and separate ourselves from the relationship because we aren’t afraid to hurt the person's feelings.

We aren’t afraid to be disliked even though it’s painful. 

While more agonizing initially, it saves us from wasting endless time with people we don't even truly like, just to avoid hurting their feelings.

This is just one of countless ways your dark side can benefit your life.

But first, before you can use your shadow I think you should own it first.

You have to own the fact that there are things about you that people aren’t going to like and may even be disgusted by. 

You have to embrace the shadow. 

Otherwise, you will be a slave to your niceties, and craft your whole life around other people's desires. 

You will essentially, never truly be a person. You will never live YOUR life.

Practice Being That Person 

Once you've embraced and accepted your shadow, it's time to start integrating it effectively into your life, alongside your strengths—the "good" aspects of yourself.

Now, before we continue—I'm not saying the real you is just the bad stuff.

Your strengths are important and, in many situations, more crucial than your weaknesses. The challenge is to integrate both, creating new and unconventional strengths and an overall heightened self-awareness.

Here Are Five Ways I've Incorporated My Shadow To Be More Disagreeable And Selfish In A Healthier Way:

• If the answer isn’t an enthusiastic “ yes “, say no, and in general, practice saying no more than yes to get comfortable with how no makes you feel.

• When the shadow reveals itself, embrace it, and analyze it through the lens of empathy and constructive criticism. Refrain from self-depreciating behavior such as substance abuse. This only makes things worse and pulls you further away from necessary self-awareness. 

• Consult with your shadow through journaling, use journaling as your safe space to speak to yourself about your ugliest thoughts that you often repress otherwise. Use them to help you make more meaningful and authentic decisions in your life

• Explore your childhood traumas either alone or with a therapist to decipher the meaning and origin of your shadow. Use this comprehension to further increase your self-awareness and mindfulness.

• Understand that incorporating the shadow is a negotiation, not a resolution. It is also not a singular event but a pattern of repeated efforts over time of continuous integration. 

These methods, are what I have found to be most effective and sustainable to produce the desired effect of what embracing my shadow can do for me. 

In fact I’ve found that these strategies are what precisely define “ shadow work “ 

If you’d like more information on shadow work and how to do it. Refer to this link. 

Detest Arrogance 

The final step that I think is useful to understand when discovering and improving yourself is to detest arrogance. 

Arrogance the way I see it is thinking that what you know is enough for you to confidently feign superiority to others.

The more we know about ourselves the more we think we know about what others should be doing. 

The only people who know what’s truly right for themselves are them, never you.

What you think is right for people is just a projection of your biases, limited knowledge, and life experience. 

This isn’t useless, and sometimes people will directly ask for that from you if they deem it useful. 

But even then what you say means nothing if they choose not to do anything with it or do something else. 

It can feel really good when we advise because it portrays us as an authority figure to people and that’s soothing to the ego. 

But from my experience, being someone that gives advice all the time, especially unsolicited can lead to your head being so inflated you can’t keep your feet on the ground anymore. 

Knowing more about yourself doesn't make you better or worse than anyone else; it simply gives you more data to take responsibility for in your OWN LIFE—or not.

The ultimate form of wisdom is always having the humility to know you know nothing. 

That’s why when it comes to what I write in my emails on these types of topics. I try to always come at it with a “ How I “ attitude rather than the “ how to “ attitude I used to have when I started and had periods of arrogance. 

I only use "how to" when I have an undeniable understanding of something objective, with clear proof of comprehension through my results with both myself and others—such as in fitness, for example.

Other than that, It’s been extremely helpful for me to constantly humble myself and keep my mind open, despite it being painful and humiliating at times. 

No one likes to feel stupid and ignorant.

But those who are not willing to be fools will never be masters. 

What you think you know now that will solve everything today, will be insufficient tomorrow. 

I always subject myself to ( preferably ) healthy judgment and scrutiny.

Conclusion: 

Being yourself, the good and the bad can be one of the hardest things a human being can do.

It’s shocking how ironic that is, but I think it’s the truth.

It’s often easier and more comfortable to live through our personas instead of having the courage to be free and be ourselves despite the potential for negative outcomes, people not liking us, relationships failing, hurting feelings, etc.

This forces us to be with ourselves, in solitude, more often than the people pleasers in us want to be.

But only in this solitude can we forge the inner strength needed to return to the world and make more meaningful connections with others.

Otherwise, the cycle will continue, and we’ll wake up one day not even recognizing the person in the mirror.

Don’t be that person—be yourself.

Thank you for reading.

Be exceptional, 

Leon

Weekly Wisdom - "Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions. But when he realizes that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself." (James Allen, As a Man Thinketh)