The act of choosing yourself. It sounds simple enough but can also feel like absolute taboo. Historically speaking, women and other marginalized communities especially, have always been expected to step aside to make room for someone else’s joy, success, and recognition. Society has expected us to stay quiet, be polite, go unnoticed for far too long. And so, over time we have forgotten how to choose ourselves first and why it’s imperative that we do.
What Does Choosing Yourself Say About You?
As another part of widespread societal conditioning, we have been led to believe that if we put ourselves first in a relationship, workplace, or when it comes to making major life choices, we are selfish. Who likes the idea of being selfish?
Prioritizing your own needs first, as long as it doesn’t actively cause direct harm to someone else, gives you the space to be truly authentic. You get to ask yourself what you want, what you need, what is important to you, and what will make you feel safe in that particular moment. But not only that, when you honour that first, you are also ensuring that you are able to show up for others to the fullest of your capacity.
Choosing to put yourself first is not selfish. It’s empowering, its liberating, and its affirming and when you operate from this place, you can really be a pillar of support to others without losing yourself in the process.
Choosing Yourself is Disruptive to the Status Quo
And this is why it can feel so uncomfortable. Everything you are used to doing must be changed. Going to dinner when you really aren’t in the headspace for it. Taking on additional unpaid roles at work. Saying yes when what you really want is to say no. This is familiar territory and completely different to the territory that allows us to say no without feeling responsible for the way that makes someone else feel and learning that saying a full-body no has never ruined anyone’s life. In fact, it often has a hugely positive domino effect.
What Do You Do When Old People and Patterns Resurface?
You have done the work, shifted your perspective, and started showing up for yourself more and more. Then someone from your past reappears, or an old dynamic resurfaces, and suddenly you’re not sure where your boundaries are anymore. It happens to everyone, and it does not mean that everything you have worked for has come undone.
The people and patterns that resurface are often tied to an older version of you. One that was more accommodating, more available, more willing to shrink. When you no longer show up that way, there can be resistance. Some people will adjust, others won’t, and your job is not to manage their response or bubble wrap their feelings.
Instead, in this moment, the most useful thing you can do is pause and ask yourself honestly: “does this feel safe because it’s right or because it’s familiar?” Familiarity and alignment are not the same thing, and knowing the difference is how you stay grounded in who you are now rather than drifting back into who you once were.
Courage Is Not the Absence of Doubt
Choosing yourself will not always feel certain. There will be moments where you second-guess your decision, where the discomfort of holding your ground makes you wonder if it would just be easier to give in. That doubt is simply teaching you that you are human and you are doing something that goes against years of conditioning.
Courage in this context is not the absence of doubt. It is continuing anyway. It is holding the boundary even when your hands are shaking. It is trusting your own instinct on a situation even when someone else is pushing back on it. You do not need to feel confident to act with integrity. You just need to be honest about what you know to be true for yourself.
Giving Yourself Permission to Keep Going
This work is not linear and it is not always graceful. There will be days where you choose yourself clearly and without hesitation, and there will be days where you slip back into old patterns and say yes when you meant no. Both are part of the process.
What matters is that you keep going. Not perfectly, not without setbacks, but with a genuine commitment to yourself that you return to each time you drift from it. You do not need anyone’s permission to grow, to change, or to decide that the way you have been living no longer works for you. That decision belongs entirely to you.
About Marjorie – The Courage to Keep Choosing Yourself
Choosing yourself is ongoing work, and it is some of the most important work you will ever do. If you are in the middle of it, navigating the discomfort, holding your ground, figuring out who you are outside of everyone else’s expectations , then Empowered Evolution was written for exactly this stage. It offers grounded, practical support for people who are ready to stop shrinking and start living with real intention.