Trying to be Different is Overrated

Have you heard the sayings growing up, “be different”, “be unique”, or “standout”? These sayings all have good intentions but what the heck does it even mean? With today’s world and everything that can be seen on the internet, this concept of being different or unique has somewhat become a wet blanket on ideas. I am sure a lot of us have come up with something great just to find out someone is already doing whatever it was we thought of. That idea just dropped from being “awesome and unique” to “damn, it’s already done.” I believe this halts creators from putting great ideas into action just because “someone else has already done it” or “I’ll just be copying and I need to be different.”…BS. Screw this idea of trying to be different. Because why?

You are already different. 

There is only one of each person in this world with the exact personality, experiences, genes, background, culture, friends,  family, schooling, and everything else that goes into making us…us.
 
It’s less about being different and more about being yourself and by being yourself, you are different. Anything you create from videography to photography, dance routines, paintings, music, poetry, pottery, spoken word, comedy, ANYTHING, will have a little piece of you left in the work that you have created and that little piece makes it yours. It’s me who is writing this blog. It’s Luke Swenson, who writes his songs. It’s James Corwin who paints his phenomenal paintings. All of these things have been done before but never in the entire life span of this world has any one of these arts been done specifically by these individuals. And that alone makes them different.

Being you is the most unique you can be.

It is the people who are completely themselves that are the ones who standout, the ones who are seen as unique. It is those people who appear to be different but when in fact; they are just being who they are. Why is Casey Neistat so good at vlogging? Partly because of practice. But also because he is genuinely himself in every episode and you can feel that.

​I saw this video back in a college class. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a great video of a person who inspires an entire group of people around him just by doing what he does best...by being himself.

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