Your Most Attractive Quality Is Untapped Because You Are Copy Leeching
The truth is staring you right in the face.
Ever wondered why you suck at basketball? Why you’re a terrible singer? Why you find your job boring? Have you ever felt like you can’t make sense of the world around you?
Maybe you’re constantly up at night, wondering why your life is miserable? You don’t feel happy about living yet another day.
Well, the truth is that you feel empty because you are living somebody else’s life. Shocked?
You’ve probably noticed that after spending a lot of time with someone, you start talking and acting like them. We often don’t even realize that our manners are evolving — that we are constantly influenced by those around us.
Let’s say your best friend starts saying the word “totally” in almost every sentence. Of course, the two of you spend a lot of time together, talking, listening, and taking care of each other’s well-being.
After a while, you notice repeating the word “totally” too often in your conversation. That’s your subconscious adopting your friend’s manner of speech.
When we are more focused on the people around us, we care more about them, feel a degree of dependency, or have a desire to please them. These factors make people more mirror others.
Other times, people only feel the need to copy others if they have the same goal. This person could be your boss, a co-worker, a friend, or a public figure.
Copying others, more broadly, can range from unconscious processes where seeing others behave in a certain way is directly related to our own behavior, to conscious strategies, in which we choose to imitate because we are unsure about a course of action or because we want to fit into a certain circle.
Understanding how copying others affects your life
Copying is the behavior in which one person unconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another. There is a biological reason we tend to copy the people around us without even realizing it. Imitation is present even before we are born; babies heartbeats follow the same rhythm as their mothers.
Some study says humans have a “mirror neuron system,” which enables people to learn through imitation. Mirror neurons allow a child to simply watch her parents tie their shoelaces and then imitate the action without specific instructions.
Copying is something we do with people we like or care about: we copy their body language, speech, facial expression, and more. Copying body language is a non-verbal way of showing empathy. It indicates that we are somehow connected to that person.
When you are in a restaurant with family or a group of friends, it is common for everyone to ask what the other is ordering. They ask this before the person orders as they try to mirror their meals.
Another common thing you may see is couples walking in step. In these cases, copying someone is a sign of comfort and confidence and shows that people are in sync.
The point of copying is that it is a way to better understand and connect with others. Being able to imitate someone is the same as being able to listen to someone.
Why you should break the habit of copying someone else
Nature has given us all a unique identity. Each of us is different from the other. If we try to copy someone else, we are going against nature. Nature never copies; every living being created by nature is unique.
We are all unique in ourselves and we have our character and qualities, but we don’t even try to look for them, we try to follow someone else and in turn kill our original self.
In a situation where we normally become someone else, we permanently lose our identity. Our individuality is expressed more through a different combination of choices than through certain possessions.
Now tell me, why do we have different fingerprints, different ears, different noses? Wouldn’t it have been so much easier if we were all made from one mold?
A model with no differences, no comparisons. The creator should have done it, but he didn’t. Why not? Apparently, He needs us to be individual. He needs us to be different.
Instead of copying an existing model, he created a new “You” because he wants you to be who you are! You exist because you are needed for the things you already have? So, why bother being someone else?
Recently, I had to learn how to stop imitating the people I admire and redesign my life to the point I feel overwhelmed living my life the way I should.
Being true to my strengths and recognizing my weakness as a motivation. Now I would like to share what I did to master emotional freedom. If I can do it! So can you.
Elevating yourself from your past
“Your past is just a story. And once you realize this, it has no power over you.” — Chuck Palahniuk
Royce, a friend of my mom, was dyslexic, nonverbal, and sexually abused when she was a child. She read and wrote backwards and was ridiculed. But she was able to overcome her disabilities, insecurity and self-doubt by encouraging women older than forty to push fears aside and go all in.
She was married to a business executive and moved around the world with her three children many times. She got used to being the new person at the PTA meeting. Transitioning was a way of life.
After returning to the United States — moves round the globe with her children aging and the empty nest lurking, she taught herself how to podcast where she dialogues about women and inspire them to face the challenges of middle age.
Sometimes it can seem like your mind is working against you. You try to live your life, but your brain keeps concentrating on the bad things that have or could happen. These kinds of thoughts can be frustrating and exhausting. It takes a lot of energy to worry all the time.
You must be vigilant of your thoughts and emotions and the negative stories you tell yourself. We can rewrite stories by repeating positive things over and over again to reconfigure our brains and ignore negative messages.
Our experiences in life differ. Imitating how other people deal with their problems is useless because you will never fully understand them, their experiences are unique to them. You could never be me and I could never be you. We are different in many ways, and that is a beautiful thing.
Whatever hidden can be uncovered
“You can imitate, but at some point, you have to start identifying who you are as a painter. The ‘who am I’ of the inward journey that every artist must take.” — Camille Przewodek
By slowing down, looking within, and listening to your inner wisdom, you can tap into your creativity.
Each person has many strengths and weaknesses. The main objective is to identify them. When you try to be someone else, you ignore the powers within you. The person you are trying to copy is no better than you. They are different and that’s ok.
It is not easy to understand ourselves, we have to try very hard to realize who we are and very few people try to do so. Looking at someone else’s life can help us understand our life.
We are all unique in this world. It is not wise to constantly compare ourselves with other people. We try, consciously or unconsciously, to imitate those whose personalities inspire us. In this battle, we must focus on exploring ourselves and discovering our inner hidden abilities.
Rebuilding your life with compassion
Empathy is the highest order of emotional intelligence. When you can see with another’s eyes, hear with another’s ears, and feel with another’s heart, a whole new level of understanding and communication opens up for you.
At the time of the World Trade Center attacks, Virginia Buckingham was on her way to Boston’s Logan Airport, which became the launchpad for the two hijacked planes that destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
She was blamed for security problems at Logan during the worst terrorist attack on American soil. The family of a 9/11 victim forced her to resign and charged her with wrongful death. “For many years, I feared that the blame was deserved,” she says.
After a year at home, she became an editor and columnist for the Boston Herald and persevered, despite the fact that many journalists publicly opposed hiring her.
Virginia first pushed away the pain, guilt, and trauma. Only after allowing those feelings to return and experiencing them again did she begin to heal. People said she had to move on. To close the door. Instead, she used pain as the foundation for what she was becoming.
She was able to rebuild her life and career and learn valuable lessons. She writes about her journey in her new memoir, “On My Watch.” Virginia says she discovered an important difference between continuing and moving forward. She says that she finally found a way to recover by showing and receiving compassion and empathy.
Most people do not recover from trauma. They do not advance. Letting go is a slow, thoughtful, and deliberate process. Accepting that these events have changed you forever is something that will give you the heart and strength to reveal your true identity.
Design a life of your own creation
There is no coincidence. Everything in the universe exists for a reason. You are not talented accidentally! It’s also not a coincidence that you don’t have the talents that you would like to have.
We are all unique. While you long for talents you don’t have, you neglect those you do have. This is pretty counterproductive, right? You are gifted with a unique set of talents, so find out what they are and develop them.
If you don’t have a nightingale voice, then don’t be a singer. You can do something different with your life according to the talents you have and leave the singing to someone who is naturally gifted for it.
If you don’t have a talent for acting, you shouldn’t act. If you’re too heavy, you’d better start dreaming about something else than being a fashion model.
Another indisputable fact is that everyone is gifted with their own unique talents. Don’t be deceived! Talents don’t just refer to activities like singing, acting, dancing, painting, writing, or excellence in sports.
Your unique talent maybe your spontaneity, your enthusiasm, your connection to animals, caring for the disabled, your generosity, being a good teacher or public speaker, being a caring member of the community, or being a good problem solver. The list of potential talents is really very, very long.
What matters, in the end, is that you are yourself. Being yourself is discovering what your unique talents are. Many people are generous or kind. That is true, but your uniqueness lies in the combination of his most important talents.
Find out what your outstanding talents are and how you can bring them together. The beauty of your uniqueness lies in the synergy and alignment of your key talents.
Copying is different from inspiring
Don’t just imitate others. Observe them, learn from them, but don’t try to be like them. Learn their skills, but then implement them in your own life and continue on your own path.
Because you walk your own path, you cannot follow in someone else’s footsteps, nor can someone else lead you down your path. They have their path, you have yours.
We must try to draw inspiration from the people around us, from all the important people who live on this planet but resist the temptation to copy them. There is a difference between copying someone and being inspired by someone, and we must understand that.
“Inspiration dies, imitation thrives.” — Darby Bannard
Set your standards, be proud of yourself and your achievements. Be happy and confident in your own skin. You don’t have to compete. What you need is to be happy. You are a person, appreciate that and stop being pampered to believe in yourself.
Instead of trying to copy someone, we should try to discover ourselves, understand our true nature and be ourselves. Let’s discover the real us. Let’s give ourselves the opportunity to express our true selves; our true individuality is not what society or people want us to be. Let’s be ourselves.
It would be a great waste of time to be someone else. You are at your best being yourself! The world needs you just as you are. Dare to be yourself. The more you dare to be yourself, the more freedom you will feel.
