Happy Friday, loves!
Funny story – I did not have a blog post scheduled for today. I’m writing this on Thursday, scheduling it for Friday morning because it’s currently on my mind and I’m feeling a bit passionate about it.
If you’ve been following along the past few years, you already know my family and I have what we call Wednesday Night Dinners. It’s a looooooong tradition that began before we even had kids. As a matter of fact, it all began in 2008 when I was pregnant with our first child. My husband and I had been married three years and our friends, Corinna and Geremy, were married for two years at the time. They weren’t parents yet, either, but they were working on that.
My husband and I always went out to dinner on Wednesday nights to our favorite local restaurant. It was like our halfway through the week celebration, and we began inviting our friends. They joined us for the better part of two or three years every Wednesday night for dinner. Addison came along in the late summer of 2008 and their first child, Geremy Jr., came along in the spring of 2009. Somewhere in 2010, we made the decision to stop going out to dinner on Wednesday nights and start hosting our dinners at home.
We’d host one Wednesday, they’d host the next. And we’ve been doing that ever since. We’ve also added a total of 5 additional kids for a grand total of 7 little people. Wednesday nights are loud, fun, and something we all look forward to every week. We laugh – a lot.
(Fun Fact: Craig and Corinna are the same person, and Geremy and I are the same person. In fact, we are so much alike in our mannerisms and the way we think and act that we’re POSITIVE that somewhere along the line, we share some familial DNA and we are FOR SURE related in some way, shape, or form.)
These kids have grown up together, but so have the adults.
And that’s where this post actually begins now that you’ll never get the past two minutes of your life back. My bad – but not really.
During our #wednesdaynighttradition this week, Geremy mentioned he read my New Year blog post, and that he just had to tell me that he feels that I’ve changed so much in the past year – for the good. I’ve become more confident in myself and who I am, unapologetic, and very much a badass motherfucker – language situation, y’all (maybe I should mention that the four of us use BAMF regularly in our vocab to describe our current life situations and the things we’ve accomplished in the past few years…).
Anyway, he’s not wrong. I have changed a lot in the past year. I have become so much more self-aware and confident. I know what I bring to the table, and I don’t make apologies for who I am and where I stand.
And that made me realize something – when the three people you look up to and admire and respect most in the world all think you’ve grown so much in the past year, you take a look at what they’re talking about. I spent some time this morning reflecting on the conversation the four of us had about that, and it makes me want to share some of what I think helped me to grow in my confidence and my success over the course of the past year – their love, support, and sarcastic comments aside.
I’m always learning
At some point, it occurred to me that my failures are just learning curves. Perfection is overrated and unattainable, but perfectly imperfect is pretty darn awesome. I make mistakes, but you won’t hear much about them because they’re nothing more than a notation on the list of “things that taught me to do better,” in the future. If I make a mistake, believe me when I tell you that I’m owning that mistake. I don’t place blame. I don’t pretend that everyone else is wrong and I’m right, and I never assume I know everything. I make the mistake, I own the mistake, and I move on from the mistake with a newfound lesson in life that will help me grow and become better the next time around. And I apologize when I’m wrong.
If I’m happy, I don’t care if anyone else is happy
I recognize the harshness in that statement, but I don’t apologize for it. What I mean by this is being happy with myself is far more important to me than making other people happy. It’s important for me to like myself, but it’s not important for me to have others like me. I live by two mottos in life – the first is that what other people think of me is none of my business, and the second is that I just don’t care what other people think. It’s a waste of time and energy. If I cared what others thought of me, I’d spend my life very sad. Trust me – I’ve written well over 100,000 articles over the past 11 years since I began my business, and they’re posted online on dozens of client websites in which I have millions of monthly views. And with that comes the comments. The emails. The Facebook messages. The Instagram messages. The Pinterest messages. And most people aren’t nice.
In addition to that, I recognize how I look, the things I love, the way I speak and the way I behave – and I know it’s not for everyone. I get it – and I like it. I like me – a lot. If you don’t…that’s okay. You don’t have to. I don’t mind. The caveat here is that you have to stop worrying about other people, too. How other people live their lives is none of my business, and it’s not my concern other than to be happy for them when they’re happy.
I know the kind of person I want to be
I might like myself now, but I’m always looking to evolve, change, and grow as a person. I can always find something about myself I could improve upon. For example, 2018 was one of those years I learned a little bit about how easy it is to backslide into habits I thought I gave up in high school. Gossip, judgment, negativity. They can creep into your life in a quick second, and it took me a little longer than that to realize that I needed to get that in check and reel that in fast. I’m imperfect, but I can fix those things when I realize they’re a problem.
I know who I want to be, and that’s a good person. I love giving back. I love doing for others. I love people who do the same. I surround myself with the best of the best. Kind, humble, hardworking, successful, generous, hilarious, wonderful people who I’m so fortunate to call my own – because you become like the people you spend the most time with.
And, you guys, I don’t want to be a petty, reactive, overdramatic, loud 4-year-old. Cute as they are, I spend most of my time with tiny humans who suck the soul right out of me when they’re not being sweet and cute and reminding me to let my inner child out (does she come with that inner child metabolism if I let her out? Because my kids have been doing nothing but snacking every 2.4 second this Christmas break and I could use some of their never-gain-a-pound situation).
I choose people who mimic the traits and qualities I love and admire the most, and then I learn from them every single day. I want to be more like them because they are the best of the best – and anyone who knows them will tell you the same. From my husband to our friends – I can honestly say that I have the best people in the world, and I know who I want to be is more like the kind of amazing people they are.
I embrace whatever
My confidence is growing daily, and it’s because I embrace myself. I don’t mind being overdressed. I don’t mind being materialistic in many aspects of my life. I’m good because I embrace my situation. I don’t mind being a bitch, because I get stuff done. I don’t mind that I’m not ‘traditional’ in many aspects of my life. I don’t really cook or do laundry, but my husband is so good at it that it doesn’t matter. I embrace that. I embrace that my life doesn’t look a lot like everyone else’s. I embrace that my husband and I don’t have traditional careers or that I’m not much of a housewife.
I embrace that I have OCD tendencies that might make people raise their eyebrows. I embrace that I like things my way, all the time, and I’m not all that lenient about wanting it my way. I embrace that I like certain things, certain places, and certain creature comforts, and I’m okay with that. I embrace whatever I am, whoever I am, and whatever makes me happy. I have high expectations, and I don’t view that as a problem.
I choose to be happy
Life is not perfect, y’all. But it’s pretty damn great. While we sat at Wednesday night dinner this week, we were discussing our goals for the new year. None of us make resolutions, but we always have new goals – though we don’t just make goals in the new year. We make them all year, work on meeting them, exceeding them, and then working on new goals. It’s a thing (BAMF, anyone?). When my sweet friend, Corinna, made a comment about seeing all these people on social media making new year resolutions this week, she said she has a long list of goals to meet this year, but she doesn’t have resolutions because she likes how she looks, she likes how she feels, she likes her marriage, she likes her life, and she’s really happy where she is and she’s not looking to change any of that.
It’s like she took the words right out of my mouth – probably why we are so close. But she’s right. When you choose to be happy where you are and with what you’re doing, it’s okay to not want to change your life. It’s okay to say, “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m good where I am. I like me. I like who I am,” and then make some goals and let it go. I like that.
In a nutshell, if you’re not surrounding yourself with people who are just so badass and awesome and you don’t respect them or admire them and they don’t respect and admire you in return, you might want to make it your goal this year to surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you every single day. It’s like I tell my kids – a friend is a person who will never utter a negative word about you when you get up and walk away from the table…they’ll walk with you.
It’s not hard.
Growth is not optional – it’s a requirement. If you’re not changing every single day to embrace a stronger, more confident, better you by auditing your life and spending less time with those things that don’t bring out the good in you and more time with the things and people who do, now is as good a time as any to get started. If you aren’t good with yourself right now, make a change. The most difficult part is getting started – once you realize the kind of freedom you have when you don’t worry about how other people feel about you and you stop focusing on other people instead of focusing on yourself, life is much sweeter.
Tiffany Raiford 