Conformity: A Recipe For Disaster

How can conformity become troublesome? What makes us do something because of the 'group'? How can we stop ourselves from being subjected to the group mentality of our community and the outer world, and focus our efforts on being an individual?

Peer pressure.

Conformity.

Keeping up with the Joneses. Or the Kardashians.

The need to fit in. It's destroying us all. And keeps us from living out our dreams.

How can we combat this innate need to feel accepted by the group?

A disaster waiting to happen

You grow up and inevitably you join a social group. And as you age, you become more interlocked with the attitudes and values that social group hold.

We've seen it all before, the same faces running around the village in the same groups. Not knowing who they are individually, but acting as a unit and deriving their value from what others think of them.

And we do it ourselves, no doubt.

But is that a disaster waiting to happen?

Are you holding yourself back by allowing your peers to dictate who you are?

I did it.

When I set up my own business, people were shocked. A lot of people, in my mind, expected (and hoped) that I would fail. I eventually did (not to the fault of anyone else but myself), but that's not the point. The point is I had people telling me "I heard people say that Karl Cowell thinks he's something now he runs his own company."

I didn't. I wasn't doing it for them. I was doing it for me.

And that was the problem. I was doing it for me. And people don't like it when you do something for yourself and break away from the group. It's unexpected, and it throws their view of the world out of sync.

When you start to say 'no' to them.

When you stop answering the phone.

When you no longer appear in the pub at the weekend.

But so what? In time, I learned to self-validate and stop being reliant on the views of others to make me feel worthy.

And you can do that too, given the right motive.

We all need a reason to become ourselves

Who are you?

What do you represent?

What is it you want out of life?

Are you held back by your social group, your family, your Facebook peers whose values you hold so dearly to your heart?

I believe you are. I believe we all are, at least to some extent.

We work to earn a wage to pay for things we don't want to impress people we don't like.

Again, it's something we've all seen. Social groups of twenty people, knowing that there are at least twelve of those people you dislike, but you hold it out with them for the sake of it.

Have you ever been in that situation? You've got together with those friends and one of them has decided to give it a miss, only to be talked about and slagged off while they aren't there?

"He's so this, he's so that."

And yet, when he appears out of the blue to join you on the night out, there they are - the same people who were just saying how much they disliked that person, laughing and joking with them as though they are great friends.

But how can you break away from this and become yourself?

How do you snap the chains of conformity and live life for you and work towards your desires, hopes and dreams?

Stepping away from the social group

The first step is to step away from the group.

You need to recognise that a lot of the views you hold, they are not your views.

They are the views of your associates, of the people around you.

They say you are a product of the five people you spend the most time with.

I believe you are.

If that is true, who are those five people for you? And how do they influence how you think, feel and behave?

Recognising how other people influence you and your decisions will allow you to take a step back and contemplate if those views are actually yours, or are they just something you have picked up?

Life is perception, and your perception is built over the years of influence you have had from the people around you.

Who is it that is influencing you?

Are they a good or bad influence? Remember that is not neutrality. People cannot be in your life and have no effect on you. Whether good or bad, each person that you have in your household, the ones in your phone book and the 'friends' you have on social media, they are influencing your thoughts.

They don't even necessarily need to be in your life

In this day and age, our influencers don't even need to be in our lives.

We can spend more time online than we do with real people.

And the people you watch online, they have an effect on you.

You'll notice this more in the morning.

As soon as you wake up, load Facebook or YouTube and look at the recommendations you have for the videos you watch.

Notice how each of them infiltrates your mind.

The decision to choose that video, to read that Tweet or to reply to the Facebook chat group you have been added to, that requires mental energy. It requires a choice.

That choice takes as much willpower as any other choice you would have to make.

There is a reason why Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and others have the same clothes on every day. They recognise that the choice of which clothes to put on takes the same mental effort as a choice they would have to make within their business.

They plan their days with precision. And they don't allow people around them who aren't going to be a great influence.

Why do we stick by bad choices and bad people?

Toxic relationships.

Bad friendships.

Family members going wild.

Why do we stick by them?

Is it for our own good? Certainly not.

Is it our loyalty? That depends on the person, I guess.

This is a question we need to ask ourselves.

Take a look at the people in your life.

Why are they there? Do they have a good effect on your life? Are they a positive role model? Are you inspired when you are around them?

For me, it's habit.

The people we text to come over. The family members we stick by. The relationships we stay in, knowing it's not going to last.

They're all an habit.

And they can be erased, only if we make the choice.

You don't have to feel bad. You don't owe anyone anything. If people are a negative influence on your life and they are still there, that is your choice. It's not their problem, it's yours. And only you have the solution.

When we try to keep up the with Joneses, we lose our dreams.

We don't want to move out of our home and downsize, quit our jobs and open that business. Why? Because of the fear of what other people may think.

"Did you hear Karl quit his job? Why would he do that when it was such good money, when he worked so hard to get there?"

I'll tell you why.

Because I wasn't happy. I wasn't living my dreams. I wasn't doing what I knew I had to do, in order to live a fulfilling life.

What dreams do you have that you aren't living out?

What or who is holding you back?

Do you hold out on living out the life you want to life, because you are afraid of what people might think?

You need to let go of all that.

Let go of the people around you who no longer serve a purpose.

Let go of the fear of what people may think.

And do what is necessary to build the life you want to live.

You only have one shot.

Don't let your shot be determined by other people.

Focus and you'll no problem hitting the goal, getting the ball straight into the net.

Or you can be distracted by other people, only to have the ball taken from you... and lose the game entirely.