Spending Your Life Trying To Fit In Is A Horrible Waste Of Your Potential

(and will not save you from the bad things that are going to happen anyway)

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How much of your potential are you sacrificing in the endless quest to fit in?

The urge to ‘fit in’ is a compelling siren song, drawing us like zombies to a life of conformity and burning us with the pain of rejection when we dare to resist it.

I know all about both.

My cultural identity has molded itself to my changing surroundings, leaving me with a strange mongrel hybrid of national identities—ironically, I do not feel fully integrated into any of them.

I’ve spent the majority of my life enjoying alcohol as my primary social pursuit despite, on reflection, never really enjoying the consequences of doing so. Both times I’ve given it up, I’ve had to reinvent my social life.

I’ve recently emerged from a 20-year corporate career I was ‘supposed’ to pursue, even though it never fully fit how I wanted to live my life. I now find myself in the strange new land of entrepreneurship, trying to fit into a new culture that appears to treasure those who break the mold the most.

How powerful are your primal urges to make you oscillate through life, sacrificing your true identity and passion to blend seamlessly in with the herd?

What drives you to want to be another faceless sheep in the pen?

You can’t escape your evolutionary ancestry

Humans are tribal by nature—a characteristic deeply rooted in our evolution.

This instinct served our ancestors well, promoting survival through unity and cooperation within small, tight-knit groups.

Being part of a tribe meant access to shared resources, collective defense against predators, and coordinated care for the young and old. It was, quite literally, safety in numbers.

Being ostracized or left alone often meant a death sentence in the wild, instilling a deep fear of social rejection. This is why you often feel a strong pull towards conformity, even when it conflicts with your identity or desires.

However, the conditions that necessitated this behavior have primarily vanished in today's world.

Modern society provides individual safety nets that our ancestors could never have imagined. Yet, the primal fear of isolation and rejection lingers, often compelling us to conform to societal norms that may not align with our true selves.

In modern society, individualism and diversity are beneficial.

Today's most celebrated figures often defy norms and innovate, showing that success can come from standing out and carving the best path for yourself.

We put them on a pedestal and admire them. The internet moves as one, creating lofty pedestals for the latest objects of our affections—yes, even including Hawk Tuah girl.

So, we feel tension between our desire for social acceptance and our quest for personal authenticity.

You must carefully and consciously choose when to embrace group norms and when to stand firm in your individuality, forging paths that resonate more deeply with your values and aspirations.

Like most things in life, it’s about striking a balance, and it’s tough to get it right.

The media wants you to feel like you fit in so badly that they lie to you

I need to take the media to task for making this balancing puzzle harder to solve.

Modern media is total BS. Their role used to be to inform us, but since information has been thoroughly democratized online, the media needed to find a new schtick.

They chose to appeal to the herd mentality of belonging and, boy oh boy, they do it so well.

Almost all of what the algorithms feed to you either:

• Provides reassuring mental hugs that your tribe and beliefs are the best and a sure path to success.

• Savagely pours contempt on things that run against the cement-y grain of your concrete ideals. Those IDIOTS. How could they even IMAGINE another way of doing things? They’ll see.

Doesn’t it make you feel great? Doesn’t it make you want to devote more of your attention to their content? Maybe click on a few of their affiliate ads?

The current CNN/Washington Post whitewash on Kamala’s momentum is the perfect example. You’d think she’d be cake-walking her way to the White House if you rolled yourself hard enough in their post-DNC hype.

• The Obamas love Kamala! Of course, they do - to whom is this a surprise?

• Liberal influencers and Beyonce love Kamala! Again…hardly tough dominoes to flip in this battle for hearts and mind.\

• Tim Walz is a nice guy! He sure is!! I’d love to have him over for dinner myself.

Are we going to address the impacts of the DNC trying to deceive the entire electorate on Biden’s mental acuity? Or that as VP, Kamala struggled to maintain any sense of a team in her office because she’s so tough to work with?

Or that the Dem election strategy hinges on virtue-signaling to a disillusioned left who watched on in horror as they let abortion bans take hold across the country while, at the same time, they funded wars halfway around the world?

NOOO, that information would make our tribe feel bad! Let’s keep that below the surface. What shall we do instead?

• Remind everyone what a horrific villain Trump is—solid, reliable, outraged eyeballs. Excellent work!

• Make fun of JD Vance. This is the biggest media open goal of all time. He does a damn good job of underlining his unsuitability for office on his own, tbh.

BUT, what about the fact that the ~50% of the country that voted for Trump before already knew he was a crim, even if he wasn’t convicted then? What about the huge wave of dissent from Americans who feel forgotten, who are so pissed off and want to stick it to the system so badly that they would literally put a couch-f*cker in deputy command of the Free(ish) World to get their point across?

Oh no…that would be so jarring. Let’s protect them from that set of info!

The saddest thing about it all is that it’s utterly self-defeating. Hiding the genuine and present risk of losing this election from the Dem base (and that they’re currently behind) may make a few thousand voters in some of the few critical states feel complacent enough to stay home and blow the whole thing.

Not to worry, though. That outcome locks in four years of highly readable and outraged coverage about how this could have happened. If only we’d had the information, more of us would have voted.

It’s like a car crash happening in slow motion.

Trying too hard to fit in is desperate and doesn’t work

Being a Terry try-hard is the best way to ensure that the group you so desperately want to belong to will reject you.

You observe all the norms and opinions; you parrot them back. You work out who the most influential folks are: you suck up to them hard. The waters will be so smooth that they won’t notice you blending in to become part of the furniture.

Alas, the nature of group dynamics prizes people who are different. Complementary strengths, not carbon-copy strengths, make groups question and grow their shared identity. That’s the route to a group that includes you that you feel authentically part of.

Again, though, this has to be delicately balanced. You can’t piss in the porridge toooo much or it will be a leap too far.

The sad ending is that if you fabricate a persona or set of beliefs to become part of a group, you will lose anyway. Either:

• You’re so disingenuously unbelievable that the group sniffs out the BS and rejects you.

• You ‘fake it til you make’ it, and your victory seems utterly hollow. Because you didn’t win - some made-up acted-out version of you did. That’s not going to resonate.

The hard truth is that there are some groups you were never meant to be part of. Quit trying to force it and find a group that will benefit from your membership!

After all that, if there's one thing to take away from this existential merry-go-round, it's this: trying to mold yourself into the "perfect fit" for any tribe might squeeze the uniqueness out of you.

So, chuck the chameleon suit, embrace your inner oddball, and find your tribe that loves the real, unpolished you.

Every square peg eventually finds its square hole.