Stop trying to be someone you’re not

I received an email from a friend and it had 30 tips on what to stop doing to yourself...so I started reading it with the usual disinterest that comes from reading one of those boring "spam" from a friend emails, when I suddenly felt that enlightened, excited feeling. (The one that you get when you speak to someone and you connect on a deeper level or when you're sitting on the beach wondering about our existence and you get a peaceful feeling of being connected to God, Jesus and a part of the bigger plan of life.

So I thought a good start to my blog would be to write about the ones that I felt were so inspirational:

I’m going to start with one of my favorites - Stop trying to be someone you're not.

I always feel so much pressure to be accepted and be a "part" of a group, whether it’s in work or personal life. Eventually, in order to be accepted by the herd, you start taking on their emotional responses, accents, judgments, values and even physical appearances. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we criticize ourselves for each individual characteristic instead of embracing the beauty of being different?

I truly believe that our human race was meant to be individuals. Our spirits all came from the same place; our earthly bodies all produced the same way. Yet the differences are our life circumstances. Who gives us the right to treat someone on the street like they don't exist? If we are all the same, why don’t we have empathy for one another?

Watching a series called "V" the other day (Aliens invading earth, rebel groups, etc.) and the thing that struck me was that human beings greatest strength and weakness was our emotions. We also call it our soul, our spirit.

Now what is so scary is that our earth is getting to a point where we are subjected to violent images on TV, Radio's and books daily. We can watch a movie where someone gets brutally murdered and be like "good they deserved it", or not even flinch... what has happened to our empathy? We are slowly losing our greatest gift of being human.

We always feel that emotion is a weakness...but what if it is our strength. What if emotion is the gift of life?

"One of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that’s trying to make you like everyone else.  Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they will never be you.  Don’t change so people will like you.  Be yourself and the right people will love the real you. "