Why Your Real, Weird Self Is The One We Most Want
“Be yourself” is as bog-standard a life directive as they come. I believe the appropriate response is, “Duh.”
Still, it’s a necessary reminder. The desire to fit in (which must have evolved from a survival tactic to avoid getting ousted from ones’ tribe and lunched on by whatever beasts were nearby) is strong. The pervasiveness of social media means the pressure to adhere to acceptable standards by sacrificing your authenticity can be felt more intensely than ever before.
But think of it: in billions of years, in all of time and space and matter, in the vastness of the planets and cosmos and dentist appointments, there has and will only ever be one you. One! One unique composition of cells, born in the precise instant you arrived, alive at just the moment you are.
You may bear a likeness to your parents and grandparents. You may use similar mannerisms as your siblings. You may talk like your friends. But who you are is inimitable. You are not in competition with anyone else, nor comparable to another. You are here to serve up your singular slice of personality-pie, and no one can do it quite like you.
Your unique combination of gifts and challenges and cellulite is your brilliance. Embracing that original self is what frees you up to think independently and creatively, and to cultivate valuable and fresh perspectives that benefit those around you.
Your originality, ironically enough, is the very thing that will draw the crowd you were once scared to distinguish yourself from towards you. Because another one that acts like all the others isn’t fascinating. But a person who owns their innate genius, generates innovative ideas, lives by their values, wears what they like, and is generally unencumbered enough to be thenselves?! That’s precisely the sort of person the world can’t get enough of.
In the truth of who you are, others recognize themselves. Your originality is a permission slip for others to follow suit.
Someone’s got to lead the way. This month and forever onward, let it be, unapologetically, you.
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