Be yourself

We forfeit three fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people. Arthur Schopenhauer

Why do we do that?

Fear of being truly known for who we are.
Fear of rejection.
Fear of finding out what's going on inside of us.

Think it only happens to you?

Look what Brennan Manning writes plagued him for so long...

For twenty-one years, I tried desperately to become Mother Theresa. I lived around the world in griming poverty and depersonalizing squalor. I lived voluntarily for six months in the garbage dump in Juarez, Mexico, garbage as high as your ceilings. It was a place filled with everyone from four- and five-year-old children to senior citizens in their eighties, all crawling over broken whiskey bottles and dead animals, just to find something to eat or possibly sell to hawkers on the side of the road. I've lived voluntarily as a prisoner in the prison in Pueblo, Switzerland; the warden there believed priests shouldn't be chaplains but actual prisoners. Only the warden knew my identity. I've lived on the streets of New York City with eleven-, twelve-, and thirteen-year-old prostitutes, both boys and girls, and ministered to them through Covenant House. I just knew if I could become a replica of Mother Theresa, then God would love me.

Pretty impressive, right? Yeah, right. Brennan Manning

Romans 8:15-17
This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!