The Most Important Gaze Is Your Own

There’s a quiet kind of power that comes from truly seeing yourself.

Not through the lens of what others want from you.
Not through the projections or expectations placed upon you.
But through your own honest, unfiltered awareness.

Recently, I came across this quote:

"The more clearly you see yourself, the less reactive you are to how others see you." — Cory Allen

And it landed hard—because for so long, I didn’t even realize how much of my identity had been shaped by how I thought others saw me.

I was living in response to the world around me, constantly editing myself to be more likable, more agreeable, more… whatever version I believed was safest.

It’s easy to get stuck there.
In the performance.
In the pretending.
In the habit of shrinking, shape-shifting, or proving.

We get so used to chasing external validation that we forget how to validate ourselves.

But here’s what I’ve come to believe:

The more rooted you are in your own truth, the less power the outside world has to shake you.

Self-awareness changes the game

When you begin the journey of self-awareness—not the fluffy kind, but the honest, gritty, soul-deep kind—you start to notice the ways you’ve abandoned yourself over time.

You see where you’ve been silent when you wanted to speak.
Where you said yes when your gut whispered no.
Where you wore a mask because your real face felt like a risk.

But the beauty of awareness is that it gives you choice.

And with choice comes power.

Power to rewrite your story.
Power to meet yourself with compassion.
Power to step into the world with less armor and more authenticity.

You stop needing to be seen in a certain way.
You stop explaining yourself to people who were never meant to understand.
You stop bending into versions of yourself that aren’t even yours.

Because when you see yourself clearly, you can finally stand tall in who you are.

Here’s what I know for sure:

Peace doesn’t come from controlling how the world sees you.
It comes from making peace with how you see yourself.

So today, let this be a gentle invitation:

* What if your own gaze is the one that matters most?

What if you stopped performing and started witnessing your own growth?
What if you gave yourself permission to be, without the need to explain?
What if you could rest in the truth that you are enough, exactly as you are?

You don’t have to prove.
You don’t have to perform.
You just have to come home to yourself.

That’s where your power lives.

With deep love and unwavering belief in who you are,
Melissa