Shake It Off – What We Can Learn From Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift is not only one of the highest-paid celebrities in the world but also one of the most followed personalities on social media. There is no doubt that she has worked hard to get everything she has achieved. However, she has faced the brunt of the negative side of success. She can safely be named as the most misunderstood celebrity of our times. But, she has managed to shake it off and come out even stronger!
In 2016, she was at the peak of her success with one of her best albums peaking the charts and the hearts of her fans. It seemed like there was no looking back for her. However, the universe had things planned differently. She was accused of being a liar and a ‘snake’ and the world of social media decided to cancel her. Like she states in her 2020 documentary ‘Miss Americana’, #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty was trending number #1 worldwide on Twitter. The whole world was out to get her and nobody believed that she was in fact telling the truth.
She faced so much cyber bullying that she vanished from the eyes of the world and hid inside her shell. The whole world isolated her and made her feel like she deserved it all. In such a situation, it would have been so easy for her to give up on her career and let the world get to her. It would have been so easy for her to internalize the fact that nobody believed her and let that defeat her. But she did not let that happen.
While the whole world believed she was wrong, there was one unforeseeable factor that believed in her – HERSELF! She kept believing in herself and even when she couldn’t get herself to face the world, she focused on the truth! She used the truth to create her art. She channeled her emotions into her songs, which turned out to be some of her best work.
In 2017, she bounced back with her new album and that broke all the records that could be broken. Even today, not everyone believes in her. People misunderstand everything she does, but she just keeps pushing herself forward. No matter how many times her self esteem was broken, no matter how many times she was called names, she didn’t let it bring her down.
There’s a great lesson that we all can learn from this! There are a lot of external negative forces that conspire to bring us down. Our self esteem is subjected to many battles and it is normal for our self esteem to get wounded once in a while. However, these external forces will fail if the intrinsic force within you has a strong willpower. Words can be hurtful. Especially when the whole world turns against you (not metaphorically), you might feel broken and misunderstood.
What we must remember is to never stop believing in ourselves, and focus on the goal. No one can stop you unless you want to be stopped. No one can break you unless you want to be broken.
Don’t stop believing in yourself. Things will get better!
