Last Updated on August 9, 2024
Living in a world where conforming to the dictates of the society is normal and being different is taunted, it can be challenging to embrace your true self. As children, we were taught to follow the instructions, to do as we’re told, to wear uniforms, to do things a certain way, and to speak only of acceptable opinions.
We have been trained to accept and practice certain norms and traditions, to the point that we believed they were our own. We have been fed with the idea that being popular is the basis of our personal identity, and that being part of a unit is what we should strive for.
People who choose to differentiate themselves from the herd are considered “weirdos” and those who do things differently are bullied for being “strange.” This behavior is not limited to school grounds—it is even adapted by most people in the workplace.
It is no wonder that most of us choose to hide our true selves and, instead, put on a façade that is “socially accepted.” It’s always easier to blend in than to stand out, after all. However, we must realize that hiding behind a façade means we are building a life on lies and killing our true selves.
Living in Hiding is NO WAY to Live
Living behind a façade is not really living. Sure, you have your reasons why you feel the need to hide your true self. But ask yourself this: are you being fair to yourself? Are you genuinely happy? Are you allowing yourself to be the best you can be? If you answered ‘YES’ to all these questions, then you are one of the few who have entered utopia. If you answered ‘NO’ to even ONE of the questions, then you need to change it up.
Evaluate yourself and assess the kind of lifestyle you are living. Are you prioritizing your needs above others’? Are you speaking your truth? Do you stand up for yourself in times of conflict? Do you feel like you are sacrificing too much of yourself in order to be with certain people?
These are some of the questions you need to ask yourself. You need to know how to remove that fake social mask of acceptability and expose who you truly are. Again, living in hiding is NO WAY to live. At all.
Who are you?
When you look in the mirror, do you know who it is that stares back at you? Do you know that person’s likes and dislikes? Do you know what their true aspirations are? Do you love that person? In order to be able to love yourself, you must know WHO YOU ARE and WHO YOU ARE NOT.
Once you find out the answer to this question, you must find it in yourself to ACCEPT everything that you have discovered and embrace it all. It may be hard for you to accept the things that make you different, but just as the stars in the night sky shine differently, we also do.
These “flaws” do not make you any less of a person. In fact, you must consider these as assets that make you unique. In the words of Bruno Mars, you are a TREASURE!
Be True. Be You.
Living up to your potential is not that hard once you learn to love yourself. There are many times that we have denied who we are, and for many reasons—maybe we just wanted to get an invitation to that slumber party, or we wanted to be voted as class president, or maybe we wanted to fit in with the people in our new workplace. This is not something to be guilty of and it’s never too late to start living your truth, slowly but surely.
The journey to being yourself may can be a difficult one. This is especially true for those who have been brought up to conform. However, it is a kind of journey that all of us must go through at some point in our lives.
Being yourself can give you the personal freedom to express yourself and find like-minded people who will accept you for who you truly are.
Be Yourself Quotes
Here are some of the best quotes to encourage and motivate you to always be yourself:
1. “One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.” – Shannon L. Alder
2. “What I am is good enough if I would only be it openly.”– Carl Rogers
3. “Being yourself means shedding all the layers of looking good, wanting to be liked, being scared to stand out and trying to be who you think people want you to be. Being yourself means being naked, raw, and vulnerable.”– Jeff Moore
4. “With confidence, you have won before you have started.”– Marcus Garvey
5. “Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality, and duplicate it.” – Bruce Lee, Actor & Martial Artist
6.“The strongest force in the universe is a human being living consistently with his identity.”– Tony Robbins
7. “We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.”– Andre Berthiaume
8. “No other version, no matter how perfect it is, would ever feel better than being your true self.”– Edmond Mbiaka
9. “Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.”– Allen Ginsberg
10. “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life but define yourself.”– Harvey Fierstein
11. “Always be a first-rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.”– Judy Garland
12. “I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”– Frederick Douglass
13. “Be true to yourself. Make each day a masterpiece. Help others. Drink deeply from good books. Make friendship a fine art. Build a shelter against a rainy day.”– John Wooden
14. “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”– William Shakespeare
15. “Our entire life… consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.”– Jean Anouilh
16. “Take care not to listen to anyone who tells you what you can and can’t be in life.”– Meg Medina
17. “Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.”– Homer
18. “If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.”– Frank Zappa
19. “We must not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define us.”– Virginia Satir
20. “Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.”– Jalaluddin Rumi
21. “Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.”– Eleanor Roosevelt
22. “Be who you are, not who the world wants you to be.”– Unknown
23. “Don’t be into trends. Don’t make fashion own you, but you decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress, and the way to live.”– Gianni Versace
24. “Better to be a nerd than one of the herd!”– Mandy Hale
25. “Being different isn’t a bad thing. It means you’re brave enough to be yourself.” – Luna Lovegood, Ravenclaw
26. “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”– Bertrand Russell
27. “You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.”– John Mason
28. “Be who you were created to be, and you will set the world on fire.”– St. Catherine of Sienna
29. “There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.”– Anton Chekhov
30. “The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself.” – Rita Mae Brown
31. “There are so many different walks of life, so many different personalities in the world. And no longer do you have to be a chameleon and try and adapt to that environment – you can truly be yourself.”– Hope Solo, Olympic gold medalist
32. “Fashion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are.”– Quentin Crisp
33. “Just because they disagree, doesn’t mean you ain’t right.”– Toba Beta
34. “Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”– Marilyn Monroe
35. “We are all born originals.”– Edward Young
36. “Never dull your shine for somebody else.”– Tyra Banks
37. “I think everybody’s weird. We should all celebrate our individuality and not be embarrassed or ashamed of it.”– Johnny Depp
38. “To be one’s self, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity.”– Irving Wallace
39. “The things that make me different are the things that make me.”– Winnie the Pooh
40. “I’m the pink sheep in the family.”– Alexander McQueen
41. “When you’re different, sometimes you don’t see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn’t.”– Jodi Picoult
42. “They can’t scare me if I scare them first.”– Lady Gaga
43. “Not all who wander are lost.”– Gandalf
44. “You are not a bad person because you are gay. You are you because you are you and you were meant to be you so be you proudly.”– Tegan Quin
45. “Kites rise high against the wind, not with it.”– Winston Churchill
46. “A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.”– Coco Chanel
47. “Don’t let others box you into their idea of what they think you should be. A confined identity is a miserable way to exist. Be you and live free. Trust that in living true to yourself, you will attract people that support and love you, just as you are.”– Jaeda DeWalt
48. “The only way you’re going to get through life, happily, is being yourself.”– Nikki Blonsky
49. “When I was a child, my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll be the pope.’ Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.”– Picasso
50. “Originality is… a by-product of sincerity.”– Marianne Moore
51. “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” – Maya Angelou
52. “Don’t compromise even if it hurts to be yourself.”– Toby Keith
53. “You must have control of the authorship of your own destiny. The pen that writes your life story must be held in your own hand.”– Irene C. Kassorla
54. “Never complain, never explain. Resist the temptation to defend yourself or make excuses.”– Brian Tracy
55. “To help yourself, you must be yourself. Be the best that you can be. When you make a mistake, learn from it, pick yourself up and move on.”– Dave Pelzer
56. “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
57. “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”– Mahatma Gandhi
58. “Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.”– John Jakes
59. “The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position.”– Leo Buscaglia
60. “By being yourself, you put something wonderful in the world that was not there before.”– Edwin Elliott
61. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”– Oscar Wilde
62. “Believing in our hearts that who we are is enough is the key to a more satisfying and balanced life.”– Ellen Sue Stern
63. “Learn to… be what you are and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.”– Henri Frederic Amiel
64. “When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everyone will respect you.”– Lao Tzu
65. “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are.”– Kurt Cobain
66. “When you dance to your own rhythm, life taps its toes to your beat.”– Terri Guillemets
67. “I’m the one that’s got to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.”– Jimi Hendrix
68. “Care about what other people think, and you will always be their prisoner.”– Lao Tzu
69. “Believe in your flyness, conquer your shyness.”– Kanye West
70. “When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everyone will respect you.”– Lao Tzu
71. “If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.”– David Carradine
72. “I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I’ve written for myself, and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part.”– Shirley MacLaine
73. “Being confident is the key to life. Don’t be afraid to be you! I’m super different from a lot of kids my age with style and personality, and I’m OK with it. And if you are OK with it, everyone else will be, too. Just be yourself.”– Leo Howard
74. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”– Muhammad Ali
75. “I never want to change so much that people can’t recognize me.”– Taylor Swift
76. “Don’t doubt your value. Don’t run from who you are.”– Aslan
77. “Why should we worry about what others think of us, do we have more confidence in their opinions than we do our own?”– Brigham Young
78. “Becoming acquainted with yourself is a price well worth paying for the love that will really address your needs.”– Daphne Rose Kingma
79. “Oh, never mind the fashion. When one has a style of one’s own, it is always 20 times better.”– Margaret Oliphant
80. “You need to love yourself and be yourself one hundred percent before you can actually love someone else.”– Christina Perri
81. “To accept ourselves as we are means to value our imperfections as much as our perfections.”– Sandra Bierig
82. “Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love.”– Brené Brown
83. “My willingness to be intimate with my own deep feelings creates the space for intimacy with another.”– Shakti Gawain
84. “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”– Buddha
85. “Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”– Lucille Ball
86. “Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.”– Malcolm S. Forbes
87. “If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”– Fred Rogers
88. “Just be yourself. There is no one better.”– Taylor Swift
89. “I don’t want anyone who doesn’t want me.”– Oprah Winfrey
90. “There is nothing more rare, nor more beautiful, than a woman being unapologetically herself; comfortable in her perfect imperfection. To me, that is the true essence of beauty.”– Steve Maraboli, Writer
