Be true to yourself!

It is almost a cliche to say, be true to yourself, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. I say this because I struggled to accept myself for who I was throughout my younger life. But now, as I’ve grown older, it has become an easier and more natural thing to do.

Being true to yourself means not hiding behind the expectations of others. It also means you are free to live your life in the way you see fit. While it can be challenging, being true to yourself means living your best possible life without regrets.

While being true to ourselves can be a difficult challenge to accept, it helps us live our best possible lives. This means we are free to live in the way we want, which ensures our greatest happiness and joy. If you want to know why it is essential to be yourself, keep reading as we will discuss it in detail.

It is important to be yourself.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

Oscar Wilde

As Oscar Wilde said, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” While this advice might be more accessible for us to take, it was a massive challenge for him in his times. Wilde was a homosexual when it was considered illegal, and being true to himself eventually led to his imprisonment and death.

While the story of Wilde might sound like a cautionary tale, it does speak to the importance of being true to oneself. The reason being, while he lived a short life, he has been hugely influential in his writing and lived his life to the fullest while he was alive.

While we might not always agree with how others live, it shouldn’t be a problem as long as they aren’t hurting people.

The thing is that being true to ourselves sometimes comes at the expense of other aspects of life. As sometimes, people don’t agree with our choices, and that could have consequences, but at the same time, that doesn’t mean we are wrong.

Being true to yourself is critical because we might feel lost or like we aren’t living the life, we are supposed to be living without it. For myself, I spent many years denying my goals and expectations because I feared what other people would think. The thing is, there wasn’t anything to fear, as what could be wrong with writing books?

We often have fears or worries that objectively don’t make sense; of course, they may make sense to us, but that doesn’t make them accurate. However, the problem is that when we live in fear, we are afraid to do what we want to do or what feels right to us.

And while in the short run, that might be fine, the longer we push off what we want out of life, the more difficult it becomes to go without it.

Being true to ourselves means living in line with what we know is necessary and worthwhile. And while we might not always know what the right thing to do is, we are constantly progressing and working towards figuring it out. This matters because we are more likely to be satisfied and happy with our daily actions if they align with our goals and self-defined purpose.

What does it mean to be true to yourself?

We all have different values and beliefs about how the world should be and how we should live within it. At the core, we likely share many similarities with the people and culture around us, but crucial differences play a pivotal role in our life’s direction.

When we are younger, we are often influenced by the people around us and what our culture tells us is important. If you watch popular TV, you will see lots of lawyers, doctors and police officers, but are those the only options?

Still, we are more inclined to be pulled towards what we know rather than what we don’t.

This could explain why as we get older, we get a better sense of what we value and who we want to be because we have more experience and exposure to the world. Being true to yourself means taking in all that there is and using that to decide the best line of action. It might take time to figure out what you want to be, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

While he was in high school, my brother knew he wanted to be a teacher, so he focused and worked towards it. It took a few years to get there, but now he teaches. In his view, he is living a life that is true to himself, and because he has his work sorted out, he can focus on his family.

Me on the other hand, it took much longer to figure out what I wanted to do, even if I had a lot of hints along the way. I’ve always wanted to write, but I never took it seriously enough to do it every day or enough to make a difference. But now, I’ve written two books and am actively building this website.

What is important here is that it took me a lot longer to get to this point than my brother, but we still both found our place.

I can tell you that while I’ve been working on my goals and being true to myself, this year has been one of my best as far as progress and satisfaction goes. Of course, we don’t always get the results we want or expect, but we get loads of joy from working towards goals and living in line with our purpose.

Being true to yourself means living without regrets.

So often, when we refuse to be true to ourselves, we feel regret for not doing what we want or know we should do. And while we can’t always do what we want, we also know how it feels when we deny ourselves the things we desire.

I had similar goals to what I have today when I was younger, but it was easy to ignore them. Every night I could get satisfaction from video games or smoking weed, and while that felt ok at the time, in the long run, it made me feel worse. It is easy to ignore what we want if we are distracted, but that doesn’t make us happy.

These days, I’ve moved on and accepted the mistakes and wasted time from the past because I use my time more wisely now.

And sometimes, being busy can be a little overwhelming, but at the same time, when we are working towards our goals, we feel great satisfaction in what we are doing. We can also look back and think, “wow, I’ve made a huge difference.”

There is a big difference; I always felt regret about what I didn’t do and how my life wasn’t making progress in my younger years. But that happened because I wasted my time and didn’t believe in being true to myself. Back then, I denied my goals and desires and focused on distractions instead.

When we know what we are supposed to do but refuse or reject it, we feel shitty about it, and those feelings only grow with inaction. On the other hand, when we work towards our goals or what we consider our true self, we feel satisfied, and that continues to grow.

You must be true to yourself!

It is not my place to tell you how to live your life, but I can say from my experience that living wrongly feels terrible and leads to more disappointment. And while it is possible to avoid those feelings with distractions, it only makes things worse in the long run.

Life is supposed to be about living our purpose, and if you are reading this, you are likely privileged enough to add more meaning to your life. For that reason, you need to learn to be honest with yourself and be willing to try out those things you’ve been pushing back on. If you don’t, you will feel regret and disappointment until you do.

The truth is that life isn’t supposed to be boring; clearly, it can be at times, and we all have to go through things we don’t want to.

But if we are willing to work towards what matters for us, we are bound to find more satisfaction, purpose and joy in what we do.

Without those things, we might have to ask ourselves, are we living with integrity? Or are we even taking life seriously?

How you live your life is up to you, but I can say with certainty that being true to yourself is the best way to live, but you will only realize that once you come to accept it yourself.