You are special.
There is no denying it.
But there IS forgetting it.
We are so consumed by expectations. So lost in our efforts to please. So dizzy in our desire to appear good enough.
“Will my audience like my new work?”
“Will my friends support my decision?”
“Will my management accept my new look?”
We may no longer be in middle school, but in a very real sense, we’re still just trying to fit in.
And so we offer the world a diluted version of ourselves. A curated version. A censored version. Sometimes an altogether fabricated version. Over time we may even start to believe we are this false proxy. We relax into our hard-won sameness. We derive something that looks like courage from how well we pass as everyone else.
But courage is born not of diluting ourselves. Courage comes from being utterly and wholly ourselves.
Radically. Peculiarly.
And realizing THAT’S how we ACTUALLY fit in.
Because only as ourselves can we offer what is truly ours to give. Our best songs. Our authentic poems. Our prescient inventions and social movements and leadership strategies.
Only as ourselves can we fulfill the promise that is us.
Only as ourselves are we precisely what the world needs.