It’s Not Your Personality

LITTLE BUDDHAS

6 / 11 / 2026

New Jersey 2021

I held the I-Phone camera up as this woman roared into it. Little Buddhas and paintings of tigers stared at me while I tried to figure out how to film without getting a shadow. What kind of yoga was this anyway?

A few weeks ago, my ex-boyfriend’s mom had connected me with a yogi who needed help recording videos for her new Youtube Channel. Since I just quit my NYC job to pursue coaching full time., I could use the extra cash. This was a perfect opportunity to do some side work. Plus, I wanted to get more into yoga.

Earlier today I arrived at a house on a very upscale street in one of the most affluent towns in New Jersey with homes that have no business being that big. But this place was different. There was nothing showy New Jersey about it. It was poop brown with overgrown shrubs and surrounding woods. The inside was even more modest, only the necessary furniture and barely any paintings on the walls. Besides the tigers of course. Original work by the yogi herself and quite impressive I must say. I had always been a bit of a painter. A bit of everything really.

I feel my stomach in my athletic pants. I’m filming her and yet somehow I’m still worried about how I look. These pants aren’t the most forgiving and I feel like after I eat one thing my stomach starts protruding out.

Chronically fixating on what I don’t like is a regular practice for me. I wonder if the yogi thinks I’m too muscular. Would she care? I have no idea why I’m wondering about these things, but right now they seem very important.

We just filmed the same thing five or six times with no luck. Shadows ruined it, lighting was off, she looked fat (her words not mine, I guess we all have it), we forgot to move things out of the way.

Finally she looks at me like she’s had enough. “I’m going to freshen up, do you want water?”

“No, I’m good.” I reply as I re-watch the latest recording. I’m feeling just as frustrated as her and I want to get this done.

“Jesus, you’re like a drill sergeant”, she exclaimed.

I laugh and shrug. “Sorry, I know I’ve been told. It’s just my personality”, I answer, still looking down at the phone and not feeling the least bit sorry about it. I’m a perfectionist and a hard worker, I know that. I’m proud of it. I have big dreams. I’m on the hunt to succeed. I will do whatever it takes. Duh.

I feel something in her energy shift and it causes me to look up.

She looks me straight in the eye and declares “It’s not your personality, it’s just what you’ve gotten credit for”.

Excuse me? I stop playing with the video.

I shift my weight and laugh - too fast, too easy.

This is like, my second time meeting her. What does she know about my personality and what does that mean? It feels like she just caught me doing something embarrassing. And SHE was the one we just filmed roaring into the camera.

She just walks out. I decide to play with the lighting again.

After she freshens up, I still refuse water, and then we try filming a few more times before she hands me some cash and sends me on my way.

As I get into my car, I can’t stop thinking about what she said.

What does that mean? But deep down, something about it was already sitting in my stomach. The same stomach I was judging before.

I just don’t understand it yet…

Oh when I tell you, this entry aged like fine wine from when I wrote it in 2021. Turns out, I’m not the person my ego thought I was back then. Thank god, because I actually got to know myself.

I had a mom that let me paint designs on my own bedroom walls. I even spray painted graffiti on my closet doors.

Earlier than that, I used to dress myself for kindergarten too, I’m talking green stripped tights and purple dresses. My mom said she gave up trying to get me to wear something I didn’t make up myself.

I grew up with a mom that knew the power of art and expression, and I had the freedom to express a lot of it.

Looking back, the image-fitting started in high school, like it does for most of us. College followed, and that one was intense for me. Deep down, I wanted so badly to belong. But it’s kind of funny being a free soul because one image rarely ever fits. So I got good at shifting into whatever image the room required.

I think it’s one thing to be exceptionally yourself, and another for your sense of worth to rely on exceptionality.

Can we just acknowledge how normalized this is for women? The constant monitoring - our weight, our stomachs, our homes, our career, whether we look too silly doing something as alive as roaring into a camera. And it's not like this everywhere. There are people who never got this particular download, and people who've done enough work to delete it. They just get to live. Fully, freely, in their own bodies and rooms and expressions.

Back then, I was not one of those people yet.

But I feel that God has challenged me over and over again to let go of the obvious (and the not so obvious ways) I’ve sought out external validation.

Which is pretty cool, because the only thing left in the room is to actually feel myself and who I am.

So I think I’ll keep seeing where that takes me…