“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?” –Danielle LaPorte

I was mindlessly scrolling through the wonderful world of Instagram when I scrolled past this quote. One of my friends had posted it, saying that it was one of their favorite quotes. And I could automatically see why.

If you didn’t read the quote above properly, please take five seconds to read it again. Read it over and over until the harsh truth of those simple 15 words has been ingrained into your brain.

Every time I read it, my mind is blown. It’s such a true statement isn’t it? Well it is for me at least.

Personally, I find myself occasionally doing or not doing something because
I am afraid of what everyone else will think, or I don’t want to possibly offend someone. I believe we all constantly struggle with this.

The idea of being accepted by our peers and by society in general. Some are fueled by the idea of fitting in and being liked by everyone they come across.

It’s not enough to simply be ourselves anymore. We must continually change how we look, what we say, and what we do to appease the rest of the population. It took me a while to admit to myself that I was a victim of this epidemic.

Looking back, my entire junior high career was spent putting on a façade in order to seem “cool.” I became extremely religious and threw myself into that crowd. It wasn’t enough to be who I really was. I had to do things differently, had to fit in and not be seem as weird or an outcast.

I remember two years ago, during my sophomore year, I finally pulled the wool from over my eyes and began acting like myself, my true self.

I stopped trying to simply fit in and began to just act extremely goofy and weird.

else. I’m not saying that all religious individuals

are judgemental and harsh to those who celebrate

our own business and simply celebrate Christmas how we see fit.

And I think that’s how we should all act sometimes. Let’s go crazy and channel our inner five-year old.

Screw what the rest of the society thinks! You are who you are, and no is ever going to change that. I know that it is extremely hard, and I constantly struggle with finding who I really am.

But I’ve come to believe that life is a constant search of who we really are. It never really ends.

I’ve come to look up to individuals such as Jennifer Lawrence and Miley Cyrus becuase depsite being in the spotlight constantly, they always show their true personalities for the rest of the world to see.

Now I don’t have a plethora of knowledge about everything, and I will never say that I am always right, so if you choose to disregard this and go back to desperately trying to get everyone to like you, then I won’t try to stop you.

All I can say is that you are going to be trying really hard for the rest of your life, constantly trying to impress people that could probably care less about you and what you do.

So follow your passions and quite frankly, just don’t give a damn about what the rest of the world thinks about you.

Because in the end, you are the one in control of your life and no one will ever take that away.