How to not care about what other people think about you

I used to be very insecure about myself. Whether that was about my weight or because I was Asian, there was nothing about myself that I could hold onto as my internal truth and source of confidence. So, whenever someone would call me a name or think of me a certain way, I had no foundation to know if it was right or wrong.

I would look to others around me to be that "star football player" or "crazy smart person," but it felt like I was none of those things. And even though later on I started working out and becoming more aligned with my Asian heritage, I still was always self-conscious about what other people thought about me.

This reached a climax this summer when I would constantly have the urge to post on Instagram in order to get validation. Day in and day out, I would think about what to post to make myself look good or appear a certain way.

After the summer ended, I decided to delete my Instagram account for a multitude of reasons, but in doing so, I learned how to be myself.

There are so many activities we partake in just for the spectacle or for praise, but in forcing myself to be alone without the option to post or share my life, I started answering the question of "what would you do if nobody else was watching?" From then, I started picking up things that I loved so much that it didn't matter what anybody else said about it because those things genuinely brought me joy behind both closed or open curtains.