I can never stress enough how important it is to be your own person. I know, we’ve been taught for ages that standing out is bad, and that what you should want is to fit in and be part of the crowd. The truth is, that’s not the way it should be. Conforming to someone elses’s standards doesn’t make you happy, and it doesn’t gain you true acceptance if your heart isn’t really in it.

People who think for themselves and stand out from the crowd are shunned in our society, but that doesn’t mean that society is right. Conformity makes it easier for certain people to control others, that’s why they want us to all be alike. If we all think the same way, live the same way, want the same things, we have no true sense of self and we can be controlled. The reason that society makes being yourself sound like a major crime is because people who have true self are much harder to control.

But it’s not just a matter of not being controlled, although that is incredibly important. It’s also about happiness. As I said, you’re never going to be happy if you’re trying to fit into someone else’s box just to be accepted. If you’re not naturally part of whatever crowd you’re trying to get into, you’ll never fit in. They may pretend to accept you for a while, but you’ll be cast out eventually. You should only try to be with people who are like you and accept you for who yo are.

This applies not only to societal groups, but to everyone in your life. You are not supposed to be who your parents or friends or teachers want you to be. If you are not what they want now, you never will be. That sounds harsh, but the truth is that no matter how hard you try, if they did not accept you to begin with, they never will. They’ll always find ways to see you as not good enough. You have to be who you really are, and find people who accept you that way. Only they will truly care about you and help you to excel in life.

Now, finding your true self can be difficult. You have to constantly ask yourself if what you’re thinking and doing is really you, really what you want, or if it’s just the result of other people’s influences. Then you have to act and think in ways that are your own, even in the face of other people trying to change you into what they think is better or right. Hard though it may be, it’s something that every one of us needs to do to be happy.

It can also be hard, especially in this current society, to find people who aren’t sheep, people who aren’t just falling for the status quo and trying to create a world of clones. It can be hard to find people who are real and not just posers for the sake of fitting in. They can be found though. You just have to have faith and patience. It’s worth noting though that a lot of people with a true sense of self don’t bother labeling themselves or forming groups. They’re just scattered all over, and come together as they see fit. You’re not going to find a labeled group of “Cool, real people who aren’t sheep” anywhere nearby. You can find amazing people though, you just have to be open to them.

I wish I could give some easy step-by-step process to shaking off the control of society and finding out who you truly are, but I can’t. It just takes time and the will to make it happen. It’s in you though. All through your life you’ve had feelings that certain things were right or wrong, good or bad, fun or boring. All of those tell you who you are, you just need to pay enough attention and use it to change your life.

Briana Blair

Briana Blair is an author and artisan. She has published more then 30 books and thousands of articles across multiple sites. After practicing Paganism and witchcraft for 25 years, she's now on a journey as an atheist and skeptic. She's eclectic, unpredictable, and always evolving. Facebook - Twitter