Becoming a Wonder Woman is Not the Only Answer – The Hidden Advantages of a Sensitive Person
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Recently I’m lucky enough to get messages from people who read my blog posts, saying “Your post made me feel much better. Thank you for sharing.” I’m so happy and overwhelmed! Knowing that there are some people taking their time to read what I write is already unbelievable and exciting. Now, there are people who even send me messages…? What’s going on? I’m the one who should be sending thank you messages to all of you! I feel so grateful – and this experience made me realize something.
I used to hate myself, because I was the weakest and the most sensitive person I knew. I used to get hurt by small things, so easily. Even things too small for everyone else to care about could upset me terribly. Once I started worrying about something, it took me so long to recover from the negative thoughts.
I always thought there is something wrong about me and that I needed to fix it. However, if you see that from a little different perspective, it could just mean that I could pay attention to the details, and that I could notice very small things – even things other people tend to overlook.
Since I knew that I can’t live feeling down all the time, I worked so hard to learn how I can make me feel better, how I can recover, and how I can avoid falling into the same situation again.
I spent so much time and effort to overcome difficult experiences or my own negativities, so when something similar happens – or about to happen – I often knew what to expect: what’s going to happen, how it’s going to affect me, how I’m going to feel, and how I needed respond to that situation.
My weakness and sensitiveness – things I always saw as my obstacles – had me learn about myself on a deeper level, and as a result, gave me a whole better understanding about myself. It took a very long time, but since I spent a lot of time, I could examine and learn thoroughly about how I can live a happy and authentic life, while being weak and sensitive.
Now that I even feel like I’m one of the most courageous person I know. I feel like I’m almost bullet proof. When my friends – who seem a lot stronger than I am – ask me, “I’m currently having a hard time about this, do you experience similar things?” or “Sometimes people think about me like this, and it really hurts me… Do you have problem like this?” my honest answers are something like this: “Well, in that case I will think this way, so it won’t consume me that much.” or “If that happens, I’ll try not to let that affect me, by taking actions like this…” My strong and positive answers often surprise my friends, but that surprise myself the most, I swear.
I’m still not sure whether I should call it ironic or serendipitous – but what made me grow into one of the most positive person I know is my own weakness and sensitiveness. The reasons why I used hate myself turned into the reasons why I love myself now.
If I were born positive, I wouldn’t have even needed to think that much about my personality. If my friends asked that me – the born positive version of me – the same questions, the conclusion of my answers would be the same as my current answers; “I don’t really mind”. However, that me wouldn’t have any idea about the reasons why I don’t mind, and wouldn’t be able to give any advice to them about how to overcome the problems.
I’m not saying that I didn’t want to be born positive. If it was the case, my life would have been amazing, in a completely different way from the one I’m having now. I could have spent more time on other things, for example learning, practicing, or working on something, because I wouldn’t need to spend an immense amount of time on understanding myself or how to cope with my flaws. If I were stronger, I might could have been some kind of an expert.
If I were stronger and more positive from the beginning of my life, I might could have been a wonder woman, however, I couldn’t have probably understood how my friends are feeling or what they are experiencing, when they are having a hard time. Unlike I can do now, probably I couldn’t have said “I’ve felt that way too.” or “When I was going through similar things, I tried to think or act this way, and that helped me to get through it.”
Now I can say, from the bottom of my heart, that I’m proud to be weak and sensitive. I’m not just saying. I’m not pretending or compromising. I’m not trying to justify my weakness. I mean it. I truly feel I am happy to be a weak and sensitive person – because that way, I can understand people’s feelings and I can do something for them, even if it’s a really small thing.
Because when we’re sad, we are sad. Yes, even when something bad happened, we might still have other good things going on in our lives. But when we’re experiencing a really, really hard time, it’s very hard to look at the bright side. Even if we know it’s not the end of our lives, sometimes we can feel desperately sad, and when that’s happening, it’s too hard to focus on the good things. When I was going through such a hard time, I was helped so much by other people’s words, knowledge, thoughts, stories based on their experiences. Now when somebody texts me saying, “Reading your blog, I could feel happy again.” “Your words shifted my perspective, and now I’m feeling more confident about myself.” – I genuinely feel all of my past experiences pay off. The time I spent crying, thinking, struggling, and crying again – was perfectly worth spending. I even feel grateful about all the bad things I went through – because they gave me lessons and things to share with other people.
If someone who are thinking my blog is helpful now eventually don’t need to read my writings to stay positive someday, I would even be very happy for them – because that means they finally found their own ways to be bullet poof.