How To Be Myself And Not Be Afraid Of Your Own Identity
Many of the problems that generate psychological discomfort that people in Western countries suffer have to do with attempts to pretend to be someone we are not. Social pressure, which leads us to try to offer an idealized image of ourselves, completely hinders any attempt to behave spontaneously and faithful to one’s own identity.
That is why, although it may sound paradoxical, many people wonder… how to be myself? Let’s look at several tips to lose the bad habit of hiding between layers of a personality that is not ours.
Although society is a place of cooperation, it is also true that these links of collaboration and mutual benefit are not always very clear and the threat of their breaking always lurks.
Maybe that’s why we’re always so worried about what people will say ; In an environment where our former allies can be our enemies in the present, our personal image has a lot of value, since it is something that defines us as individuals and does not depend on anyone but us.
As a consequence, we try to create a public version of ourselves that can please others, leaving aside, in part, whether that forces us to adopt certain impostures in our habits and in the way of relating that we usually adopt. In the next lines we will see how we can combat this mentality of sacrificing everything for that idealized image and how to be yourself while embracing your own identity
We must let our physical and intellectual hobbies and interests develop. Activities that take up a lot of our time should not be driven primarily by what others expect of us.
If not, we will be wasting a lot of potential Not only because we could be very good at something if we gain experience in it, but because these activities done for pleasure, although it may not seem like it, can enrich us a lot culturally, but we will not gain as much if they are hobbies that do not excite us and that we do out of pure commitment.
2. Surround yourself with people you feel comfortable with
Being constantly surrounded by people who judge us negatively at the slightest stridency on our part is a bad decision, since, whether we realize it or not, this shapes us at the mercy of their expectations.
It is better to go to meet open-minded people, capable of accepting an idea as simple as the following: It is not necessary for everyone to be cut from the same cloth
Of course, we must ensure that these types of comfortable friendships do not end up becoming social circles in which everyone thinks the same and holds the same vision of things. That’s not only not intellectually stimulating: it makes us less reasonable and creative. The ideal is to expose ourselves to diversity because this enriches us and even allows us to discover aspects of ourselves that we did not know.
3. Accept your contradictions
No one has a completely consistent and defined personality Ambiguities and uncertainty are what prevent us from being totally predictable. It is inevitable that certain situations produce tension in us, that they make us doubt which option best represents us, and that we regret certain past decisions. That doesn’t negate the fact that we can behave authentically, staying true to ourselves.
If we constantly hide what we want and what interests us, that will end up enslaving us. There’s no point in being yourself when no one is watching ; You have to bet on authenticity practically always.
5. Value honesty
Being frank with others may be difficult at first, but it usually has a knock-on effect; It makes it easier for those around us to also be honest with us. Therefore, betting on honesty creates spaces in which it is much easier to be yourself, and in the long run that leads us to be authentic almost without realizing that we are breaking all kinds of limits that in the past hindered our way of socializing with others.
6. Demystify others
To stop trying to be idealized by others, you have to stop idealizing them; No one deserves to make all kinds of sacrifices just to please them
Achieving this is partly a matter of working on self-esteem and realizing that we too, if we wanted to, would be able to judge others negatively for all kinds of arbitrary reasons if we wanted to, but that we can realize that that doesn’t make any sense. and that, consequently, someone who does that with us obeys a poor criterion of what people are like.
7. Get rid of relationships based on dependency
Relationships characterized by dependency are a drag on personal development, in addition to generating many sources of discomfort or even exposing us to the dynamics of psychological abuse. Therefore, you have to know how to recognize them and “disconnect” from them.
