I did the same thing with blogging; I knew I wanted to inspire people but before I even thought about how I wanted to inspire them or what I even wanted to inspire them to do, I began to look at different platforms and was immediately tempted to imitate some of the platforms I admired. I tried some things that I knew were not really me and I couldn’t keep it up very long. I would lose motivation or I would struggle because lets be honest, trying to be like something you are not is just hard, and exhausting! I didn’t know where I wanted to go nor did I take time to think about who I was, who I wanted to be and how I wanted to express my uniqueness.
‘If you desire to make a difference, you must be different.’
I wanted to make a difference, but I didn’t want to be different. Different is uncomfortable and often, different to us, means wrong. Instead of being true to our distinctive qualities, we would much rather find someone close enough to who we could be, and rather strive to be like them. We have all been tempted to imitate the lives of successful people and this is why:
Well, whatever they did worked for them; so we just assume that it will also work for us.
We know that people already like and accept them and their personalities, so if we imitate them as opposed to being true to who we really are, we shield ourselves from rejection.
Being someone else just feels safer – if we are rejected for who we are not, well, at least its better than being rejected for who we really are – have you watched Catfish the TV show? – Point made!
But as safe as it feels to pursue the identity of others; it’s also miserable, limiting, and just sooo hard!
It leads to a feeling of inadequacy – Any time that you strive to measure up to who someone else is, you are guaranteed to fall short because anyone will always be better at being themselves than you will ever be at trying to imitate them. Trying to be like someone else just emphasizes who you are not, rather than helping you to discover who you are.
It limits your success – because you measure yourself by someone else’s standard as opposed to striving for your personal best.
It keeps you from discovering who you are and the unique expression of your gift. You stop valuing who you are, and what we do not value, we waste!
You become unstable in your pursuits – If you are always trying to become like the people around you, you lose a sense of who you are and will constantly change your direction based on what the people around you are doing.
“Everything is created specific to its purpose”
So don’t rob us of your gift and how your gift can contribute to our world and to this generation. We don’t want another Oprah, Vera Wang or Bill Gates…. We want you – the real you!
