We all have aspects of ourselves that aren’t immediately met with acceptance by others when revealed, and sometimes we’re faced with a decision to suppress or embrace them.
Hobbies, interests, beliefs, opinions, attitudes towards certain matters – all these things make up who we are; they make us unlike anyone else. You may find yourself in a predicament at times where you feel a need to adapt because these aspects of your makeup don’t match those of others. Staying true to who you are deep down can help you confront this hurdle.
Suppression is often the go-to, a way of not flowing against the current, so as to avoid disturbing the peace. The only thing besides a lack of growth that it creates is a loss of your identity, your essence, and liveliness. Perhaps it is simpler to fit into the world around you, to avoid being the sore thumb out at all costs, but we weren’t put on this Earth to be carbon copies of each other.
If we all wore the same clothes, spoke the same way, carried out the same traditions and had the same interests, wouldn’t that defeat individuality?
Embracing the aspects of yourself that make you a zebra in a troop of horses doesn’t boil down to stubbornness to conform. It isn’t a means for judgement or exclusion either. It propels growth within oneself and an understanding in the world around you that you won’t lose anything if you paint outside the lines.
Staying true to yourself entails an unwillingness to be malleable and mould yourself into someone you aren’t just to please others. If you happen to enjoy long hikes but find that you’re alone in that joy, don’t change your ways just because you have no one willing to take an adventure with you. Altering the fabric of your being in the slightest can leave you unrecognizable to yourself and disrupt your mental health.
Our uniqueness is one of our strengths. It isn’t something to prod and poke and make plans to change just so we resemble a more acceptable version of someone else. Stay true to yourself by embracing those aspects of yourself that you tend to hide because you feel they won’t be accepted in your world.
Photos by @gabimulder
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