This is an except from my new book Your Great Life! a soulful and strategic guide to designing a life you love. It’s coming out on April 6th {my birthday! you’re invited to the party on May 12}.
To conform is to align your attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with those around you. Conformity is a powerful force that can sweep us away from the life we love through social pressure, unconscious influences, and common expectations.
Even though our culture and society are more liberated than ever before, we still experience tremendous pressure to conform. Stifling traditions, glass ceilings, suffocating expectations, limiting labels, restrictive stereotypes, and impossible standards can be difficult to avoid. The problem is not in their existence, but in our lack of conscious engagement with these influences. Our life force becomes dull and diminished when we fail to go within, reflect on the truth of who we are, and connect with our own internal compass. If we unconsciously accept, this is just how things are, we rob ourselves of the opportunity to live a truer life. When we consciously engage with the ways in which we’re expected to conform and how these expectations affect us and shape our choices, we are better equipped to make choices that align with the truth of our soul rather than others’ expectations.
We are all unique individuals and typically, life designers have a desire to live a distinctive life. Every choice we make is a unique expression of the life we want to live. You are hard-wired for unique self-expression. From the swirl in your fingertips to the twists in your DNA, the chance of finding your carbon copy is one in 400 trillion. You are uniquely you in every possible way. Doesn’t it make sense that your life will also be profoundly unique?
On the other hand, we are also hard-wired for conformity. We are herd animals, so we feel safest in our pack. As a result, we are equipped to pick up on social cues, coordinate ourselves according to expectations, and align our lives with those around us. Social disapproval sets off the danger circuits and when we conform, we are soothed. Unfortunately, just because our biology favors conformity, doesn’t mean our souls are equally pacified.
When we live our lives from the truth of our soul, we experience more peace, fulfillment, and energy. When we don’t, we experience more turmoil, emptiness, and lethargy. Struggling and suffering often escalate when the soul refuses to conform to thoughts, choices, and priorities that betray its strongest desires.
You are not the roles, standards, and behaviors you are expected to express. There is a real you in the depths – a part of yourself that knows what deeply matters. You may find conformity is what your true self wants, and I’m not asking you to live an unconventional life just for the sake of it. Rather, life design is a process of being aware of the overt and subtle influences of conformity and consciously choosing to adhere to them or not.
When we consume the fast food of social expectations and unconscious conformity, we become malnourished and our lives grow toxic. Our true self begins to starve, we lose our spark, our actions weaken, and our expression diminishes.
Our society trains us to keep up, to climb the corporate ladder even in we’re not into heights, to have 2.5 children even if our soul doesn’t long to be a parent, to perform better, achieve more, and look better at all costs. Climbing the corporate ladder, having children, getting higher grades, driving a faster car, or buying a bigger house might bring you soulful satisfaction, but only if you are consciously choosing this kind of life, and only if it’s in harmony with your true self. Unexamined expectations and unconscious conformity are dangerous.
Conforming to the mainstream may feel purposeful and soulful. Designing a life you love may mean adhering to common courtesies, subscribing to meaningful traditions, and following the rules.
Alternatively, your soul may be calling you to an unconventional life. You may live outside the box, survive off the grid, and politely decline the status quo.
When you have an intimate relationship with your true self, it is easier to soulfully navigate outside forces and live a life you love.
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Chris Guillebeau is someone who helped find my way back to my soul and into a life I love. If you’re in Calgary, Alberta on May 12th, come hang out at a historic sandstone mansion with us! We’re hosting a free event {imagine a book party, a birthday party and a charity fundraiser have a love child} for our community and we’d love to see you. Make sure to get on the list!