Stop Trying to Be Someone You Are Not

Deep inside the quagmire of our insecurities and vulnerabilities, lies a devilish voice. It feeds on our fears and whispers in our ears to hide who we are. It keeps gnawing away the part of our hearts that tells us to be our true selves. It convinces us that we need to become someone else in order to gain the acceptance of others. And as we humans have this urge to be liked and accepted, we acquiesce. We try to put on a mask. We try to hide our fears, our complex emotions, and our vulnerabilities. We try to show ourselves as these flawless and perfect beings. We try to become someone we are not.

And in this process of self-lost, we lose everything that makes us special. We lose the qualities, flawed or otherwise, that make us unique. The pernicious influence of this voice results in us becoming boring old generic models of human existence, rather than the flawed, imperfect, quirky but unique ones that we truly are.

That’s why we should never try to change ourselves entirely. We should never try to be someone we are not. Because…

1. People who care about us, want us to be who we are: I remember a few years back, I was having severe bouts of depression and anxiety. At that point, I had 2500+ friends on Facebook, 800+ followers on Quora, 400+ on Twitter, and 300+ on Instagram. I was living such a fake life, that apart from my parents and 2-3 of my friends, no one actually knew what I was going through. I had portrayed myself as someone who was having the time of his life. Even while talking to others, I would put on a smile just to make sure that no one gets a glimpse of the pain that I was in. And it worked. No one cared to look in, and I didn’t feel safe enough to let them in. And then one day it struck me. In my life, I had so many people who were my “friends”, but I didn’t even trust 5 people with whom I could be my vulnerable self. And that was the day I erased all of my social media accounts. I talked to people who I knew cared about me. I tried to turn my life around and tried to be comfortable with who I was. I realised one thing in this ordeal; people who actually care about us, like us for who we are. They are interested in who we are, and not who we show ourselves to be. And the people who judge us for who we are, who want us to be someone else for their benefit, well maybe we don’t want those people in our lives.
2. Society doesn’t know what’s good for us: We have all come across people who give us advice on how to lead our lives, without knowing a single thing about us. These are the same people who want us to conform to the societal norm, and just be like everyone else. But when we are at a cross-road between what we actually want to be in our lives, and what society expects us to be, we should always go with our inner voice. Make the choice that makes us happy. Be our truest selves. Be someone that we are proud to be. It doesn’t matter if it’s something that others around us don’t approve of. It doesn’t matter if it’s something which makes others feel that we are weird. We should do and be, what makes us happy. No one else but ourselves knows what’s best for us. So we shouldn’t let others make our life decisions for us.
3. It’s impossible to please everyone: Speaking from personal experience, the more we try to change ourselves based on others’ opinions, the more we will lose what makes us special. If we try to accommodate everyone, just so that we are liked by them, then we will have no control over how we lead our lives. There will always be people around us, who will tell us what we did wrong. They will always look at our mistakes, and judge us on those. We shouldn’t be one of those people, and we shouldn’t put up with those people. We shouldn’t try to win the approval of those, who only see our negatives. And we should also not waste our time and energy hating those people. It’s better to just forgive and forget. And instead, we should appreciate those people in our lives, who give us the time and space to correct our mistakes and extol us on our positive actions. Those are the people that matter in the end.
4. We are not perfect, and it’s okay: We have to realise that all of us are flawed. We make mistakes all the time. We are not perfect. But that’s alright. Making mistakes, and trying to get better, is what makes the human experience so enriching. If we try to be perfect, we will never succeed. Life is so interesting because all of us are flawed. So chasing perfection, and putting on a mask to let everybody see us as perfect people, is a pernicious exercise. Instead, it’s better to try and be the best version of ourselves.

There’s no harm in trying to become a better person, improving our skills, and getting better at things that we currently are not that good at. But changing our personality, just to be liked by everyone else, doesn’t work in the long run. If we try to become chameleons and put on different colours for different people, then at some point we will be exhausted and fed up with the life that we are living. Therefore, it’s prudent for us to be who we are, and stay true to all of our complex emotions, for the world is so interesting because it has human beings who are so different from each other.