The world wants you to validate yourself according to ITS standards--not your standards.  When you are constantly measuring yourself against what you are being told by the media, or by other people, you're letting them be in charge of you. 

Your personal power comes, in large part, from the stuff you are working on that no one else may know about.  What are you doing every day?  What are you working on?  THAT's where your power comes from! 

We must keep developing ourselves according to what we ourselves deem important.  If I had listened to the red-haired kid in my class in 6th grade who told me girls weren't supposed to play the saxophone . . .