āWhat are your 3 favorite qualities about yourself?ā
My three favorite qualities about myself are my intelligence (or: teachability, openness to learning), my altruism, and my authenticity.
Iāve struggled with self-confidence a lot of my life, especially about my intelligenceādespite my grades mostly being Aās and classmates, teachers, and professors telling me how smart I am. Iām learning to embrace the ways Iāve been told that Iām smart, and to overcome the ways that I have been taught to think myself not so smart, too. Iāve been working to internalize the āgrowth mindset,ā which is the idea that just because you havenāt mastered something yet doesnāt mean you canāt. Maybe you just need a more patient teacher, or better materials, or more time. Thatās where Iām at with math, and Iām working myself up to really diving into arithmetic (where Iām pretty sure I got lost in school) and working my way up into algebra and/or statistics. Iām extremely proud of the progress Iāve made in believing in my intelligence and my ability to learn things I used to believe my brain wasnāt designed to learn.
My altruism/drive to help others is another thing I appreciate about myself. I do this mostly through Facebook group discussions, but occasionally in chat rooms and one-on-one interactions as well, where I take the years of work Iāve put into accepting myself, and establishing and reinforcing my boundaries and my rights to them, and the lifetime of self-doubt and self-reproach that other people are sharing, and try to help people not have to go through all the pain Iāve gone through to get here. I know it canāt all be circumvented, but I like to think my advice and experience helps people avoid some of it, if not at least be aware that those things happen or donāt need to happen. Like the meme says, I am being the Iroh I wish Iād had in my life when I was younger. If I can make anyone feel even a tiny bit better, I feel better too.
Finally, and I think the thing that ties the other two together, is my authenticity. Itās been a rough journey to get to this point, where I am unapologetically just myself. āIām the me-est Iāve ever been,ā I posted somewhere earlier today, and it is true. Iāve accepted aspects of me that I struggled with for more than a decade; Iāve accepted new things Iāve learned about myself in the last decade; Iāve given myself permission to have my boundaries, and to hold people accountable for crossing them, and to cut people off without feeling I need to explain myself if they refuse to respect said boundaries. I donāt care how they feel about them if they donāt care how I feel about things that I ask them not to do or say. Iām proud to be a language, machine learning, IoT, and radio nerd; a gelatin weirdo; a horror story fanatic; a low-key stamp and sticker collector; a well-oiled machine of routine with a 1500+ day streak on Duolingo. Iām someone whoās been through some shit and come out the other side pretty damn well, though whoās still got some breakthroughs left to make. I may sometimes be uncomfortable, but I am never ashamed.