Where it comes from and how to move past it
We are the sum of the five people we spend the most time with.
Mimicry — that’s how we learn. Hardwired from the start to blend in, to be like those around us.
Teenagers try to assert their individuality, to break apart from who their parents are. They want to be different. So they choose the clothes and music their friends like. Follow trends they saw on Tiktok.
How do we know who we are? Without the influence of everything around me, who would I be?
Occasionally I find a seedling of who I really am. A little spark of uniqueness all my own. An idea that flitters up from the depths of my consciousness. And I know it’s mine in a meta-logical way. Beyond logic. I can’t explain or reason the idea, but I know it’s important. I can feel it.
In those moments there is a crossroads. A point at which I have a choice to turn this way or that. Will I follow this instinct, blindly? Or will the words of the world convince me to ignore it?
These tiny moments are our few precious chances to be who we are. And when we open to them — quieting the voices of the world and tuning into our own inner voice — amazing things happen. Because when we stop abiding and begin creating, we express the incredible, unique person that we are.
So why are we so afraid?
We’re wired for conformity
A lot of research dollars and books are dedicated to discovering what makes humans different from other animals. Yet, we are still animals. And we’d do well to remember that the animal brain is ingrained with our higher levels of reasoning and logic. We can’t escape it.
Our animal brains have one main objective: survival. And so our brain pushes us toward options that it has learned will make it more likely to survive.
Expressing who we truly are often requires standing apart from the group. Our brains, bogged down in the minutiae of evolution, aren’t much different than they were thousands of years ago. To be an outcast meant to be cast out of the tribe. Being without a tribe was dangerous. So we mimic to fit in because fitting in means safety.
There’s no reason to be angry at our brains for making us this way. Nor to be frustrated with ourselves when we realize many of our past actions were done only for acceptance. Our brains want to keep us safe, and that’s a very useful thing to do, most of the time.
But for many of us, our lives have evolved past the point of survival. In Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, we are seeking self-awareness and even self-transcendence. We have an entire history of our own lives and generations past that have taught us the value of being similar to those around us. But moving past our fear is the only way to discover who we really are, at depth.
We have to consciously choose to express our true selves to override the ancestral instinct that is still within.
We learned from childhood pain
It’s this same drive to belong that pushed us towards trying to make friends and be part of a group in our adolescence. Unfortunately, the learning curve of trying to fit in often comes with pain. Sometimes we’re rejected, teased, bullied, or otherwise made to feel less than.
The problem is that we fall into the trap of believing the things people said about us — when really, it wasn’t about us at all. It only had to do with them.
A kid called us weird, and we didn’t have the self-confidence and awareness to realize that they were just sharing their limited perception and experience. Instead, we believed they told the truth and could see something we couldn’t see — namely, our weirdness.
We began to believe that there was something wrong with us and that we were the ones who needed to change. Even if we’re a long way past the uncertainty of adolescence, this pain is still carried.
Self-awareness practices can bring the healing realization that each person brings a unique perspective to the world, and it’s all good. We can choose to release our childhood pain by talking to our inner child. If you had a childhood bully, try thinking loving thoughts about them and forgiving them for what they said to you. Then, talk lovingly to yourself at that age, and forgive your younger self for believing it.
How to be who you are
Everyone exists with an identity. We define our identity in our relationships to other people — I am a mother, a son, a husband, the youngest of six. We define it by what we do for a living — I’m a doctor, a successful entrepreneur, a stay-at-home parent. We identify with our values or principles — I am kind, generous, a high-achiever.
In spiritual traditions, there is a distinction drawn between this self we present to the world and our Highest Self. Between the human self and the spiritual self. Between the ego mind and the higher consciousness.
The ego — or identity — is what we believe about ourselves and the image we project to the world. The ego is concerned with self-preservation: keeping us safe, and our identity intact. It’s stuck in our biological desire for conformity and the memories of childhood pain.
Our ego protects us by keeping us small, contained, and predictable. Our ego wants us to keep doing what we’ve always done — because it’s worked for us in the past.
We listen to our ego a lot. But our highest self — who we really are — is whispering to us constantly, longing to be heard.
That inkling of a feeling that presents itself in quiet moments — that’s the spark of the real you longing to be freed. It says it’s time to move on from this season, but too often it is ignored.
Intuition quietly tells me this job is no longer serving me. My logical brain shouts about the practicalities of money and wasn’t that award you got really nice?
My heart whispers a longing for deeper connection, but my habits propel me into the same superficial conversations, over and over.
I hear that whisper of truth and feel myself tensing around it, trying to suppress it with iron walls. My immediate reaction was to ignore it, to keep living my life the way I have been because it’s been going pretty okay.
But a wise person once said to me, “saying yes to something you don’t want forces you to say no to something you do want.”
We know that our desire to fit in isn’t a conscious choice, but a remnant of the days of survival that no longer serve us. We know our childhood pain of not fitting in had more to do with other people than with us. If we can accept — and heal — these parts of ourselves, it makes it easier to make a new choice: the choice to be fully, beautifully, and wonderfully ourselves.
Healing and acceptance quiet our animal, ego brain and allow the whispers of our true self to be heard.
And the more we can hear our true self, the more opportunities we have to make the choice to express it. To show up as we really are, not who the world tells us to be.
And even then, it’ll still be scary — to stand apart from the crowd, to take a risk, to change your life. But in the words of TikTok creator Elyse Myers, “just do it scared.”