Being courageous and bold is sexy and will bring you far
In a world around us that is ever changing, and we constantly have to adjust to, many of us have the desperate desire to just fit in. Fitting in means, we don’t want to be in the spotlight, don’t want to sit in the first row and use our elbows to move forward. However, is it really desirable to fit in? Or is it a good thing for us to be bold and have courage to find our place, to raise our voice, share our ideas?
Once thing is for sure, fitting in is easy. The weird thing however is, that many of us think the opposite. We think fitting in is a lot harder than standing out, which is why we are so desperate to achieve this, especially in western cultures. However, to fit in is not hard. We align ourselves in the mainstream and norm of everybody else. We end up wearing the same clothes as people around us, eat the same food and talk about the same things. The hard part is to NOT fit in and do our own thing, without feeling scared of being judged.
Not fitting in the way more difficult path, but also the way more fulfilling one in the longer term. To do our own thing, follow our own interests, wear the clothes we like and to share our opinions on topics that really interest us, requires much more effort than just going with the mainstream. To stop going with the mainstream and really do what we like ourselves makes us authentic and lets us connect our internal value and beliefs with the world around us.
To do so, we need to be courageous and make bold decisions. We have not be afraid to make mistakes and even to sometimes come into conflict with people around us who might disagree with our approach. We need to have a constant desire to innovate, accept change as a good thing as well as go on a journey to find ourselves and develop our own opinions and line of thoughts. So as we mentioned, all of this is hard work and takes time.
Boldness, therefore, is the new sexy. Already in our childhood are we politically indoctrinated that we all have to be equal and even support the weakest part of the chain. While moral value are important, what is forgotten here is the view of us as an individual, with very special skills and competence to be developed. No two humans are the same, and no matter as hard as we try, we will thankfully never all be equal and just one mainstream. What is mainstream even? It is just the majority in a society that shares a common belief or goal in one aspect. Finding our place, making bold developments and constantly discovering new sides to ourselves stand in stark contrast to that. It is however important to find what work for us.
We have to learn again to appreciate the value of those individual characteristics and abilities we have and use them to our advantage, even if sometimes selfish. Being bold and courageous is sexy, it is sexy to raise our opinions. To use our elbows to move forward and to not fit in. It is sexy to disagree, to raise our voices and to live our lives as authentic to ourselves as we desire.
The funny thing is, one we do this, we will see that we find many other that feel the same as us, share the same interests and ideas. It is therefore much easier to fit in by being true to us, rather than desperately tying to fit in by following some not even defined mainstream. Bold is the new sexy – remember that!
