Becoming Adjectives

We've all been described at some point in our lives. You may have been called "smart" or "pretty", "fat" or "weird" but I think I'm correct in saying an adjective, one word, has been used in an effort to describe you. Now, let me ask you, have you ever thought about the effect this use of an adjective might be having on you? 

Let's take the positive ones first, If someone uses an adjective to describe you that you find complimentary it gives you a boost, doesn't it? However, I don't think we realise how long these words stay with us, how much pressure they can often create. You get called clever and from that moment on you want to keep up that opinion people have of you, you don't want to do badly in a test for fear you'd lose the title, you don't say anything that might be regarded as "stupid" or not "intelligent". I know myself that some refer to me as "confident", a huge compliment in my eyes and one that I would associate with myself in many scenarios, however I am not confident all of the time, I am not as straight forward, definite or written in stone as a word is. However in my focused mission to eliminate the various insecurities I possessed, I stumbled on this, very well hidden one. You see, I wouldn't want to appear as if I wasn't confident so I would avoid appearing awkward or weak. I wanted to be invincible but I wasn't. And I suppose that would be my example of trying to become an adjective. I wanted to always be confident instead of being Rachel, with a much broader range of feelings and mental states. I believe we should all strive to be confident but putting pressure on ourselves to be so all of the time is where insecurity and frustration lies. And the same applies for anything, let's say you're referred to as "the pretty one" so you almost feel an obligation to be so everyday.

And then there are the negative ones. I would hope that we could all rise above the negative adjectives we get thrown at us and instead of becoming them, become the opposite. However in some cases, people feel that if someone calls them "ugly" or "annoying" then that's all they are. They let the adjective become them and think it a lot more important and truthful then it actually is.

And so, I wanted to write this blog post because I think its a problem we could all have in our lives and may never realise it. What I would say is when people describe you in a word, think twice about the way you're going to take that comment. After all, it is just a word they've used to describe your surface layer, your behavior, what you give out to the world. There's a lot more to you then those few letters and  it may be totally inaccurate to who you know you really are.  We all have preferences on how we'd like to be described, some would love to be called intelligent, others would rank being called "pretty" higher. However, what I've learned is that we should never aim to be described a certain way. Whatever adjectives best describe you should be the most complimentary. Never do or say things just because its normal to what people in your social group or "category" do. You are an exceedingly complex individual who can never accurately be summed up, isn't that wonderful to think about?

Love,

Rachel! =)