Be yourself. It is the most important thing about your life. Most people live lives where they can’t be themselves. It takes effort to learn how to be yourself. It is not easy. However, nature has made you unique and your priority in life is to maintain that uniqueness.

This is perhaps one of the most important posts on the blog. If you want to be happy, you must be yourself. You must be you.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment-Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a problem to be solved for every living human being on the planet because the society doesn’t like people who are being themselves. The society likes clones. In a miserable society devoid of happiness, people who try to be themselves are plain aberrations.

Most people do what most people do. That’s why it is quite difficult to find people who are original. It is difficult to find people with original, well thought out opinions on life because most people aren’t being themselves. Their beliefs have been borrowed from the society, their lifestyle is built on borrowed thinking, and so is their entire life.

Everybody looks like everybody else because nobody is really being themselves.

What would happen if you insist on being you?

1.

The society will protest. Your own family will protest. They will protest why you have to be different and not live a life like everybody does. It is likely that your thoughts about yourself and the kind of life you want to lead will not align with those of the rest of the society because the society is not a happy place. If it were a happy place, it would be a good idea to copy it, but it’s not. Therefore, it doesn’t make any sense to be like the rest of them.

So, you are likely to be labelled as a rebel just for being able to think for yourself and having your own thoughts and beliefs about life. You would realise that even the thoughts that your parents have about life, in most likelihood have been derived from those of the society and they are not quite productive.

Obviously, there are people who think independently and have already reached a point of self-awareness and being themselves. However, these people are rare and quiet spread out in the society. They are exceptions to the rule.

So, you will have to fight for the right to be yourself. If you will be able to live a life being you would depend on how strong your convictions are, and how much pain you are willing to bear for your convictions. Why is that so?

Simply because if people don’t believe in your ideas, they would not support you emotionally or financially, and you would be left to fend for yourself. You will need a lot of fight in you then to be able to fight for you right to be you.

2.

It is difficult to be you because that would also mean that you will have to understand what it is like is to be you in the first place. Most people do not make this effort and hence they struggle to be themselves since they don’t know what that means.

How do you understand yourself?

You pay conscious attention to your strengths, your weaknesses, your joys and your pains, to start with. You do things which are based on your strengths and avoid wasting time on your weaknesses. However, you are aware of what those are. You do more things that bring you joy, and avoid things that cause you pain.

Understanding yourself is a lifelong process and you would need to commit to it. We also evolve as human beings and hence therefore, we change. We need to pay attention to things we learn as a consequence of our mistakes, and keep understanding ourselves better through the process.

3.  

You will be happier but a little lonelier. Unfortunately, this is the truth. The kind of world we live in, doesn’t quite reward people who are being themselves. The society rewards clones. Therefore, even if you achieve financial success being yourself, you will lose some people in the process who wouldn’t agree with your idea of your happiness.

This is the dilemma that many LGBTQ people face in the world we live in, for example. They would be happy coming out as people who have a different sexual orientation and coming out would make them happier, but there is a risk that when they come out, their own families would desert them, and as a result, they would be left alone. So, many of them stay in the closet and live fake lives being someone they are not, just to conform to the painful standards of the world we live in, where homogeneity is rewarded and differences frowned upon.

What is the answer?

If I would want to tell you to conform to the society, I would not writing this piece. Be you, at any cost- at the cost of your family, which fails to understand and wants to put you in a box, at the cost of the society which wants to put you in the same miserable box it puts everyone else in.

Be you, at any cost. Your parents had you without your permission. If they can’t accept what makes you happy, they have no right on your lives. The society has no right on your life. Fuck society. Go find your happiness. The only way you can truly find your happiness is by being you.

4.

You would find true happiness. This is something I guarantee. When you are true to yourself and create a life based on an understanding of your true selves, you will reach a level of joy that most people can’t find. You will feel connected to your life, and not feel hollow, peaceful because you have found yourself. You would be able to give your best to the world because finding yourself and then expressing yourself is the only true way to live a meaningful life.

5.

You will accept yourself. One of the toughest internal struggles we face is to understand ourselves. We complex creatures with complex characters and habits. Once we learn to be ourselves, we accept ourselves completely, with our shortcomings, faults, along with the good in us. Accepting ourselves frees us from the guilt we carry about who we are, and what the world tell us to be. It would lead to a deep feeling of peace.

6.

You will stop caring about what others think about you. The world is used to gossiping and it needs subjects. They can’t gossip about people like them because there is nothing to gossip about them.

When you start being you, what others think of you will stop bothering you and you will only be concerned about how to be better at being yourself since it is a constant process of self-evaluation and calibration.It will free you from the clutches of social constructs and resulting conformity.

You will be free to be you because what others think of you doesn’t matter to you at all.

7.

You will struggle and you will have to fight. I must warn you. This is not an easy journey. It is going to be difficult to be yourself and sustain being yourself. You would struggle, and you would have to fight for your right to be yourself every single day. It is not a journey for the feeble at heart.

The world is used to conformity and it respects people who conform. It doesn’t respect people who try to break free and find an alternate reality to life. Till you succeed at being yourself, which means financially and create a life being yourself, there will be a lot of confrontation on the way, and you will not be able to resist it.

You may try to avoid, but they will be right on your face trying to make you a part of their gang. Be you, at any cost.

8.

You may die fighting the good fight. There are chances you may not succeed at making yourself a success through this journey. You may die on the way. Only when you are able to lift yourself up, the fight will become a little easier, but then it never really gets over.

If you die on the way trying to be yourself, remember that you died fighting a battle that was worth fighting unlike the feeble souls who have never had the courage to be who they are, and become a part of the faceless crowd.

9.

You will not compare yourself with others anymore. Since you understand that you are different, you would not compare your life with those of your peers, colleagues or friends. You would focus on your own life and improving it in terms of your joys and impact on the world. Your happiness would not get affected by the lives of other people’s lives and you would stop feeling jealous about other lives. It is a significant shift in the quality of everyday life,

10.

You would take responsibility for your life and decisions. It is quite simple since others would not have a say in your life, you would be able to and required to take responsibility for your life. You would make your own decisions based on your conscious self-awareness, and be responsible for the consequences. This doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes. You would make mistakes, but you would not blame anyone else for those mistakes, since you own up the responsibility.

11.

You would be careful in seeking relationships, in building relationships since your top priority would be to be yourself and anyone who doesn’t like your idea of you, would not be compatible with you. It is extremely difficult to change what’s fundamental about us. We can make minor alterations to our behavior to suit our relationships, but we can’t change what’s fundamental to us. We can’t change what we value and therefore, it is extremely important to seek out people whose values match what we value.

12.

You would be extremely confident. Your self-awareness would reflect in your confidence. Not many people in the world have reached a level of self-awareness that they could decide the right partners for them or make the right career decisions that generate maximum value. When you are being yourself, you operate at a high level of self-awareness and hence that reflects in your confidence.

13.

You would inspire others to be themselves. People who find themselves are not happy with clones. They like to inspire others to find their true selves as well. Therefore, it is a recurring positive loop. When you find yourself and start being you, you inspire others to get rid of the robotic mind-set and go find their happiness by being themselves.

14.

You would be the black sheep in a flock of white sheep but you would not be ashamed about it. You would be happy being you. Nature made you black. You did not choose it. Be yourself in a world where everyone looks similar. There is a responsibility on your shoulders to be you and you would not shy away from that responsibility.

15.

You would lead an original life. You would lead a life like no other. Think about it. No two human being look the same, well identical twins do, but even they don’t have similar fingerprints. This is proof that nature does intend for us to live similar lives. We are made different, with different biology, backgrounds, talents, strengths, weaknesses and environments. Nothing is really similar between two lives. Why would you want to live a life like that of your friends, peers, school mates, college mates, social friends, colleagues or business partners? Why?

When you are you, you would live a life as unique and unprecedented as you. Do that. Won’t you? I am so grateful that I got to a point in life when I got to write this piece. I hope it inspires you to be you, and not just that, be the best of you.

Thank you for reading.

The purpose of this blog to help you find your happiness. Please read the other posts on the blog, and follow so that you get updates when new posts are published. Please share any posts you like with your friends so that they can also find their happiness. If you have any feedback for me, please leave it in the comments and I would be happy to work on it. If you would like to support my writing and this blog, you may please send a donation through PayPal here.

I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.

Love,

Amarvani