Welcome to the life against the grain podcast. I'm your host, Nikki Marie, a wife, mother, mental health advocate, and generational wellness coach. If you are ready to redesign your life according to your desires and your morals, but you feel trapped by the constraints of society and inherited beliefs, then you are in the right place. I want this podcast to serve as a safe space to explore, evaluate and envision your own blueprint for life. So let's get into it hello, hello, hello. Come on in, take off your jacket, put up your feet and stay a while. I'm your host, Nikki Marie and today we're going to be diving into something that hits close to home. And I'm still learning to work through. It's allowing yourself to shine guilt free. In today's episode, I'm not showing off. I'm showing up. Hey, guys, so this topic hits very close to home because ever since I was young, I've been creative. I've been social. I've been inquisitive, nosy. I've been all over I like to get into things. And it didn't always. It wasn't always welcome from others. And looking back now I can understand, from an outside perspective outsider's perspective, why they might have been reacting that way. But in the moment, I was just feeling down or thinking that there was something wrong with me. I was always told I was showing off when I wanted to sing when people thought I was being a quote unquote, teacher's pet. And because I was able to adapt to many different situations, I was able to just roll with the punches, and not let it affect my mood in a way that it would affect others. When I was younger, I used to be in a choir in the school choir. I loved every moment of it, because like I said, I love to sing. And for me, it's not even just performing and having people look at me because I'm actually nervous when it comes to that. But I just love singing I love music. I love anything. I love listening to other people sing. I just love music a lot. So I used to hum and and sing here and there. I even sometimes when I'm standing online, I'll sing to myself low and not noticing that other people are hearing me and then when somebody does hear me like, Oh, hey, you were singing. That was nice. I usually say thank you, but then I clam up and I'm like, holy crap, I have to stop singing. Like, I get really nervous about the person realizing that I was singing, I just wanted to say, but when I was in school, I used to have classmates and other choir mates jealous. And they used to be a little snotty at times. I had choir mates that used to tell me not to audition for stuff, because they wanted to have a chance like that they thought the teacher wouldn't pick them if I auditioned. And that honestly wasn't true. Other people had solos when I was a part of the choir. But me shining in that way. made someone else feel insignificant made someone else feel insecure. And it's not my job to make them feel that way. And it's not my job to like, hide myself because it feels weird to them. And why do we teach each other that it's okay to back down to dull ourselves and who we are so that someone else can shine. We have people shining together all over the place. There's nowhere that says Only one person can shine at a time and that that makes another person less than. So we really need to help encourage each other to learn from one another. Instead of wrapping these anchors of insecurities that we have about ourselves around other people's ankles and dragging them down into our own mess into our own negative thoughts. We have to stop telling other people to stop shining because it hurts our eyes. We need to get it together. We need to put our sunglasses on and learn how to shine too. It's not exclusive to one person, we could all get it done, you just have to do the work, you just have to show up and get the work done. I always used to be called a teacher's pet as well. And it honestly didn't even bother me. I didn't care that people were calling me a teacher's pet. But it's just another example of you trying to shine. And other people are uncomfortable with it from their own experiences and insecurities within themselves. So they pick at you and they want you to stop it. I was always a teacher's pet because I was friendly, and was friendly with the teachers, especially if it's a teacher that I liked. Why would I not be friendly? And that friendliness and being able to answer questions because I'm kind of a nerd. So I would always, I would always do my work, I was the kid that like to do extra credit, for no reason. Sometimes I gave myself extra credit to give. And that had nothing to do with the teacher, it had nothing to do with me trying to show the teacher something or make the teacher feel some type of boy, I just really enjoy learning, I enjoy sharing what I've learned, and I get excited about it. So I don't mind doing more work about when it comes to something that I'm passionate about, or that I'm excited about. And people really didn't like me ...
