Stop Hiding: It’s Time You Embraced Your Creative Identity
Uncovering the impact of being yourself.
“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”
— Oscar Wilde
Everyone has a role model, someone they admire deeply. These individuals have impacted our lives in ways we can’t even begin to describe. And whether we choose to admit or not, what we strive for is predicated on what they’ve done.
We see role models as characters worthy of being imitated because they’ve somehow set a precedent that has become our pursued bar of expectation.
There’s nothing wrong with that. The innocence is unmistakable. How else would we live our lives with such drive to succeed without those who have gone before us?
They’ve been there and done that. But for some reason, our minds go blank when this specific question places us in the limelight.
Who are we?
Your identity gets placed at the forefront of everything. And you’re forced to deal with your own life instead of basing it off of someone else’s. These are all good things once we give them a chance.
Take Yourself Seriously
There are certain situations in which we could find ourselves. Life gets pretty crazy sometimes. That question gets to the heart of our pursuits and why we’re going after them so vehemently. And it is an excellent question to ask, often.
What tends to happen in these moments is we start to think about the person we admire so much. We try to picture a scenario and how things would go if we were in their shoes. As crazy as that sounds, people do it all the time.
It’s a way of coping with circumstances around them. Some don’t necessarily know how to respond to specific issues, so they try to trade places just for a moment.
But here’s the problem with that: we ignore ourselves.
You have to learn to take yourself seriously. You do this by actually practicing tasks that matter to you, even when you don’t see immediate results.
Doing what really satisfies you begins with seeing yourself as less of a joke and more of a person with purpose and skills to be sharpened.
Stay True to Your Individuality
Our decision-making capabilities become dependent on what we think someone else would do when we leave ourselves out. We don’t even know them, yet we so suddenly assume their identity.
Think about this: people have their own set of strengths and weaknesses. They vary from person to person to match the fact that our identities are, in fact, different.
Some people are good at telling a story with their words. Others may be great at taking photos and illustrating a narrative that way. Either way, they’re storytellers.
You have a voice that even the greatest creators can’t mimic. Why would you waste time trying to imitate them?
Those who come in contact with the content you create can identify you only when you stop pretending to be someone else. Eventually, that charade will end and the real you will have its self-inflicted scars as a result.
Don’t hide.
Use your voice, your words, your skillset to establish your identity. You already have it. You just need to use it with authenticity.
Everyone’s Path Is Different
We always take a wrong turn when we assume everyone’s journey will be the same. Some people are better at certain points than others. There’s no way of avoiding that, and we shouldn’t try to.
That shouldn’t be a bad thing if we slowed down to think about it. There will be bumps and potholes that we won’t have to experience. Some of our missteps will be on things that came naturally for them.
We tend to get hung up on what we can’t do instead of focusing on what works for us. And in the process, the road becomes monotonous, and the journey becomes less worth it.
The resolve is often to turn around and follow a different trail, one that is similar to someone else’s. That is what I like to call ‘shooting ourselves in the foot.’
The path we’re on is not coincidental. It’s not a mistake. There’s a reason for everything we experience, every impressive win and every horrible loss. Sometimes it’s hard to understand that. I know it can be for me.
But the reality is our journeys are different. The moment we stop avoiding that is the moment we grow closer and closer towards our desired destination. That’s a reality worth accepting.
There’s Nothing Wrong With Making Your Own Mistakes
Another piece of the issue lies in our inability to distinguish mistakes of those role models from hypothetical situations we put them in.
If there is something you can learn from them, some nugget of wisdom you can take with you for the rest of your life, do it.
They weren’t perfect, just like you aren’t perfect. So catching future mistakes before they happen is made possible when we identify where our role models went wrong and choose to go the other way.
No one else can walk in your shoes except you. People can help; they can encourage the steps you take. But ultimately, you have to make every one of them.
There’s nothing wrong with learning from others. The most distinguished people have blazed their own trail after all. At the same time, that trail (as amazing as it may have been) is not the trail that you must take.
There are mistakes to be made and as a result, lessons to be learned. Trying to align our lives with theirs based on assuming what they would do makes our journeys seem obsolete and useless.
The question for each of us is not, “Who were they?”
The question is, “Who are we?”
The difference rests in our acknowledgment of our unique identity used to express our creativity to those around us. How that looks will be different, but its impact remains the same.
Our journeys include our own mistakes, the kinds of missteps our role models make. And that’s okay.
You know why? Because that’s what makes us who we are, living our lives in a way that shines a light on our purpose, our gifts — for the betterment of our world.
Kevin Horton is a 24-year-old photographer, student, modest book-worm, and wanna-be web developer with a new-found love for writing. He writes helpful words about creativity, productivity, and the enjoyably simple life.
’Til next time. Thanks for reading!