East Africa Youth Data

East Africa Youth Data

We are the drivers of regional agenda, our voice must be hard and corrugated in to policies that shape our future.

Probably one of the biggest challenges in our modern society: dare to remove the mask we have been wearing so far and be ourselves!

As long as we behave according to other people’s expectations, what’s most popular, what we think we should be, what we think men/women like, we are not being true to ourselves. Each time we play a role, pretend we’re somebody we’re not, force ourselves to fit in society’s standards, the result is when we get home alone and face ourselves, we feel terrible.

We want to live a life perceived as perfection but we lie, to others and we lie to ourselves. It’s exhausting, it drains our energy, it makes us suffer deep inside, that’s why most of the time it leads to addictions, eating disorders, and other behaviors aiming at escaping or forgetting who we really are.

We are not accepting ourselves, we are not acting from a place of Love but from a place of Fear: fear of rejection, fear of not being good enough, fear to be different, fear to not be loved, fear to end up lonely. But the body and the soul don’t agree with the mind’s decision to not accept its truth. That’s when the body starts to get sick of it: the cells want Love and they get Fear (that’s when some people develop illnesses like cancer), the soul wants to thrive and express itself, and is imprisoned in a tiny box the mind has created in order to feel safer. But our real safety lies in freedom, true expression and alignment with who we really are. Only then can we thrive and experiment true happiness. Remember, there can only be one You, so be yourself fearlessly.
I know it’s certainly not an easy task. And I’ve been through this before. I always had the feeling that I was different. (And I was…) – During my school years people would think I was weird, because I was not drinking, smoking, dating boys or going out as often as they did (if not at all :) – I would prefer to stay home, draw, write or read… not the most popular or coolest thing to do when you’re a teenager, right? :)

I had big dreams… they could not understand… but I stayed myself. I am glad I was not influenceable at all when I was young, and that I always kept my dreams and my values in mind, no matter what reaction I got from others, even if it has not always been easy. Sometimes I was really feeling I was weird, because of them, but now I know I was not. I was just a little more aware than them, and I felt I had a purpose here. Things to accomplish, dreams to pursue.#

So… if you feel weird or different, compared to people around you, that may be judging you, please don’t sacrifice who you are, to become like others. Because you will sacrifice your mission on earth, your dreams and your life purpose too.

We are all different and we all have different things to accomplish in our life. So we should never compare ourselves to others. Except if it’s to INSPIRE us to get better.

Hope this article helped! If yes, please share it with your friends! And please leave me a comment in the section below, I want to hear about you!!!

Reconnect With Your Femininity

We live, in our modern society, a period which is kind of delicate for women, because for one side, women fight for gender equality, so that the differences still existing disappear (salaries, credibility, power, strength, etc.), but on the other side, what a lot of them are using, to fight it, is to adopt “masculine attributes”, which means, by suppressing their femininity. For example, some women, to prove that they are as strong as a man, will develop their muscles like a man, talk like a man, yell like a man, manage like a man, adopting the same attitudes who yet created the problems they now are fighting (search for power, lack of communication, of sensitivity, of listening, ego problems, etc).

 As in some minds, women are still seen as “the weaker sex”, some women, who don’t want to be identified with this idea, hide behind more masculinity, to prove their “power”, and so, reject their femininity (for example by adopting a more masculine way of getting dressed, of talking, of walking, of acting, of thinking, avoiding certain colors, etc).

Besides that, sometimes, femininity, and to be beautiful, sophisticated, can be seen by some women as a “weakness”, because for them, being beautiful means wanting to be liked, to please, and wanting to please, means for them being inferior, and to be willing to put themselves down,  and what they associate to a certain category of women, often called “easy”, “frivolous”, “*itch”, *luts”, and women to blame for the continual tyranny of men.

I had a period in my life, where I used to think this way, and to look down on those women, seing them as a discredit to our gender. But, as a result, I was repressing my own femininity. Because of those “clichés”, that all women suffer from, that, for example, “if you are a smart woman, there’s a high chance you’re not that sexy”, and “if you’re beautiful, there is a high chance your brain doesn’t follow”, women prevent themselves to be who they want to be, by fear of judgment, and by fear of being identified with a cliché they don’t want to be associated with. Some women even come to the point where they totally reject their femininity, by fear of being wrongly judged