Practice being yourself.

People mean well when they advise “just be yourself”. But as advice goes, it is not very useful. Because there’s nothing easy or “just” about being yourself. It is one of the hardest things to do.

A better advice would be to say “start practicing being yourself”.

Because it takes practice to shed the conditioning that pushes you to conform.

It takes practice to rise above insecurities that schools, workplaces, communities, and even families embed into us.

It takes practice to stop comparing ourselves with others, as we’ve been trained to do; and start seeing external validation for the control mechanism it really is.

It is neither easy nor quick to chisel away all that’s not you, and discover who you really are.

Especially as every system tries to program us into standardized versions of people who comply with it.

To “be yourself” in this world takes repeated practice to realize, remember, and reinforce who you are at your core, and keep trying to live that version.