Being yourself is quite difficult. Fear is the main reason people are afraid to be who they are. The fear of social condemnation, the fear of being different from others, is what prevents people from expressing themselves.
Why is it hard to be yourself?
Throughout their lives, people receive conflicting information about what the correct way of thinking, living, and behaving should be. Media, movies, magazines, smoking-room conversations regulate feelings and reactions. Popular culture forces people to conform to the abstract and constantly changing norms of consumer life, imposes its own system of values and evaluations. The overwhelming majority of people are afraid to stand out from the crowd, to form their own value system, their ideas about life, because this seems to be an unnecessary, dangerous, useless enterprise.
Unfortunately, not only popular culture makes its own demands, every person is influenced by his close people - friends and relatives. People constantly impose on others their idea of how to live, depriving each other of their individuality. Any person wants approval from others, which can only be obtained if they meet the stated standards and expectations. As a result, a person is lost, begins to completely depend on the opinions of others.
The trick is that you cannot be yourself and at the same time worry about how others perceive you. To allow yourself to be yourself to the fullest, you first have to admit that you will never meet other people's standards, accept that only your desires and expectations matter. The only person you can disappoint is you. But you have the right to do so.
How to go beyond
To understand what it is like to be yourself, try to do only as you see fit throughout the day, without looking back at others. If you succeed, you will feel how a huge tension has simply left you, leaving you with a lot of energy, which was previously spent on something incomprehensible.
To become yourself, just don't let other people tell you how to live. Defend your point of view. If you find it difficult to do it yourself, find an ally. He or she doesn't have to tell you what to do, he just needs to be with you when making difficult decisions.
If you have ideas, solutions, creative plans, implement them, do not convince uninterested people that it will work, do not wait for their approval or evaluation. To allow yourself to be yourself, it is enough to just start taking action, although it can be scary and disturbing, however, once you take the first step, you will no longer be able to stop.
