Stop Trying to Be Like Everyone Else

"People are preoccupied with being like other people, but that, by definition, just makes you more average."
(from my tweets, 2015)

I called myself "really weird" back then, and I meant it. I tweeted things like "Extraordinary people live strange lives" and "Just because everybody does something doesn't mean that you have to." Much of what people around me did, I didn't do, and a lot of what I did, nobody else did.

Underneath it was a real idea that I still believe. Trying to be like everyone else is a quiet way of giving up on being yourself. And research suggests that being yourself has a lot to do with being happy.

The comparison trap

In 1954, psychologist Leon Festinger proposed social comparison theory: the idea that we figure out how we're doing by comparing ourselves to others. It's a natural instinct. But it has a cost.

Sonja Lyubomirsky and Lee Ross studied how comparisons affect people with different levels of happiness. In their 1997 experiments, people worked on tasks next to a peer who did better or worse than them. Less happy people's moods rose and fell sharply depending on how the other person did. Happier people were much less affected. They paid more attention to their own performance and their own standards.

That doesn't prove that ignoring comparisons makes you happy. But it suggests that people who measure themselves by their own yardstick are spared a lot of emotional whiplash.

Why authenticity matters

Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan spent decades developing self-determination theory, one of the most widely tested theories of motivation. They argue that people have three basic psychological needs: competence, connection with others, and autonomy, the sense that your actions come from your own values and choices rather than from outside pressure.

When people pursue goals because they genuinely care about them, rather than to win approval or avoid guilt, research consistently finds they tend to persist longer and feel better along the way.

A related line of research looks at authenticity directly. In 2008, Alex Wood and colleagues developed a scale to measure it, asking people how much they live by their own values, how much they accept outside influence, and how much they feel cut off from their true selves. People who scored higher on authenticity reported higher self-esteem and greater well-being, and lower stress.

A word of balance

Being yourself isn't the same as rejecting everyone else. Psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary have argued that the need to belong is one of the most fundamental human motivations. We need connection.

So the goal isn't to be different for the sake of being different. Contrarianism is just another way of letting other people decide who you are, by always doing the opposite. The goal is to choose for yourself, which sometimes means fitting in and sometimes means standing apart.

What the philosophers said

Ralph Waldo Emerson put this idea at the center of his 1841 essay "Self-Reliance." "Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist," he wrote. And more sharply: "Envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide." For Emerson, copying others meant giving up the one thing only you can offer: your own way of seeing.

Friedrich Nietzsche put it in four words, borrowing an ancient line from the Greek poet Pindar: "Become who you are." In The Gay Science he wrote that the voice of conscience says, "You shall become the person you are." Not who you're expected to be, and not who someone else is. Who you are.

How to be more yourself

• Notice your comparisons. When you catch yourself measuring your life against someone else's, ask: "Is this a standard I actually care about?"
• Write down your own values. List five things that genuinely matter to you. Use them as your yardstick instead of other people's highlight reels.
• Check your reasons. Before your next big decision, ask whether you're choosing it because you want it or because it's what people expect.
• Allow one small strangeness. Do one thing this week that's genuinely you, even if nobody around you does it.
• Belong without blending in. Find people who appreciate you for who you are, rather than for how well you match them.

Today's reflection

My old tweet put it bluntly: copying other people, by definition, makes you more average. Today I'd add something softer. Copying other people also makes you less yourself, and that's the bigger loss.

So today, notice one place where you've been trying to be like someone else. Then ask what you would do if you only had your own values to guide you. That answer is worth listening to.

Sources

• Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117–140.
• Lyubomirsky, S., & Ross, L. (1997). Hedonic consequences of social comparison: A contrast of happy and unhappy people. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(6), 1141–1157.
• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "what" and "why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268.
• Wood, A. M., Linley, P. A., Maltby, J., Baliousis, M., & Joseph, S. (2008). The authentic personality: A theoretical and empirical conceptualization and the development of the Authenticity Scale. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 55(3), 385–399.
• Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529.
• Emerson, R. W. (1841). Self-Reliance.
• Nietzsche, F. (1882). The Gay Science, §270.