Be True To Yourself
“Don’t lose who you are in the blur of the stars!
Seeing is deceiving, dreaming is believing,
It’s okay not to be okay.
Sometimes it’s hard to follow your heart.
Tears don’t mean you’re losing, everybody’s bruising,
Just be true to who you are!”
When Jessie J sang those lines in her single, “Who You Are”, they really sunk in for me and have been ringing in my head every when life brings me to a certain position where I have to remember to always appreciate who I truly am.
In a world where you are increasingly under pressure to conform to a lifestyle that society deems fit and good, it’s easy to find yourself confused and undecided on what kind of life you want to lead. Before you know it, other people will guide you to be what they want you to be.
From a tender age, we were seemingly robbed of our right to choose what we really wanted to be when life shed off its softness. Elders dictated that we should have people we called our role models and hopped to emulate their ways and works someday. The education system always shoved these successful individuals down our throats and before our faces all the darned time we really didn’t have a choice but to welcome into our lives.
If a profession was highly respected by the old folks, it was praised and the preachings were we should all strive to be the other doctor or the successful lawyer and this took away our free will to think and innovate. Our options were often limited at a tender age when we weren’t allowed to choose our career paths or follow our passions.
However, the consequences of these actions haven’t ended well for some. People who took on professions because their parents instructed them to, fellas who chose career paths out of bandwagon and peer pressure have ended up either disgruntled our unhappy.
Being true to yourself and standing by what you truly believe in will come with its own wave of downsides and that should be alright. If you choose to stay true to yourself, prepare to be ridiculed, criticized and lose some friends who won’t agree with your ways. If you are not faint-hearted, you will do just fine.
However, your refusal to be anything other than yourself will draw a lot of respect for you from a section of people that resonate and vibe with you. There is no truer test of a person’s character than being real about yourself, especially when you are in the public eye. To be yourself, when everyone around you is convincing you to change is a tough run.
Not everyone will like you for it, but they will at least respect you for that — standing for what you believe in.
People suffer when they pursue a life or chase a dream that doesn’t belong to them— Caroline Myss
While everyone was born with their own set of unique abilities, sometimes the communities we live in, the friends we have & the people we often surround ourselves ultimately dictate the kind of lives we lead and we end up losing ourselves. Staying true to ourselves is no easy feat, but it is essential if we want to prosper and succeed in life.
It’s easy to lose yourself, what you believe in, what you truly stand for and this can get really tempting if money is involved to catalyze a little influence. Because we are truly unique and different, that makes everything beautiful and it’s something we shouldn’t lose sight of nor compromise on.
You should start to embrace who you really are, could be an introvert, could be a nerd or geek, could be a chatterbox. You need to embrace you are being different, appreciate & understand what works for you and bring that to your advantage & better yourself.
The sooner you start accepting your true personality, your life, your identity and strive to always be happy, the better. Embrace who you are. Embrace the weaknesses and work on them. Embrace the stronger points and leverage them. Be yourself.
The essence of integrity is what you do in and of yourself — you must be true to yourself.
