I just got back from meeting called WomenUp. This is a yearly meeting where the Asheville Chamber honors and celebrates local female leaders. I love this event. I love to see all of the amazing women in my community and to honor them.
There is always a great keynote speaker.
Today’s speaker was Caroline Wanga. Her talk was all about losing her power and then finding it by finding herself. She started the talk with 22 slides. The twenty-two slides told us things that made her who she is. It ended with a slide that said:
WHO YOU ARE IS NON-NEGOTIABLE
She found her power.
When you know yourself you have power.
We are born into this life whole. Then we become part of a larger community. We go to school and we try to fit in. We want be liked. As we become part of the community, we start to change. We hide the differences and start to change little things about ourselves to fit in. The way you dress, how you talk, what you think. You start to lose the person you were born to be.
This is part of life. It happens to most of us. When we are thinking we don’t fit in. We hide who we are, we feel embarrassed and we feel like we need to change.
Who we are is amazing. We just don’t realize it. The world is made up of individuals. We have different personalities, different needs, different wants. Individualism is what makes humans so interesting.
But being different is scary. It is scary to the people who are not like us. They don’t understand us and that makes them nervous and afraid. When they judge us we start to question ourselves. Maybe we are doing something wrong. Maybe the other people know better. Maybe we should change and fit in.
We want to be liked so we work to fit in.
But that is not where our power is. Our power is in our differences. It is in our individuality.
When we take the time to look at our wants and needs, when we look at who we are and honor our differences, we are powerful.
When we have the power, we can start to figure out why we are here on this earth, what we are here to do and how we can impact the world and make it just a bit better.
Take time to know yourself. Who are you? What do you want?
And honor yourself, because you are amazing.