Change Demands Friction: Daring to be Yourself

Full stop, baby.

Do not make the choice to see yourself through a filter of how other people might see you. Do not review your own thoughts, opinions, and behaviors through the lens of another person, or worse, the lens of multiple other people. Do not prioritize anyone’s critic. If you do that, you will always find a reason not to say or do something. You will always find a reason to limit yourself. You will always find someone out there who might think something negative or undesirable about you. You will always find someone who could reject the version of you that you decide to put out today.

You can’t treat yourself like that, and you can’t treat other people like that. Other people deserve to hear and to see you. The world deserves to see you. It’s hungry for change, and the strongest elixir for that change is for each of us to have the courage to simply be ourselves.

This requires bravery. It requires newness. It requires friction. You cannot be afraid of friction. People are changed by friction. The world is changed by friction.

So what if you are different than the people around you? Show them something fresh. People are not changed by hearing things they’re used to hearing, or by seeing things they’re used to seeing. People are changed because they hear something new - they see something new. They come upon fresh perspectives and new ideas that are challenging to their existing belief systems. They are changed by receiving those ideas in a way that they never have before - in a way that makes them explore more deeply within themselves.

Any small internal shift inside of you or another person towards more lovingness and unity for yourself and for others is worth the risk you must pay for vulnerability - for rejection.

Change demands friction, and it demands that you show up exactly as you are. It demands you release fear. It demands you release judgment – of both your self and of other people. It demands that you are present with your own sense of self rather than a sense of the selves of other people. Do not abandon your self.

You are powerful, you create friction, and you are necessary.

That is all.