Growing up, everyone in my tribe was good at something. They were amazing artist, athletes, speakers, the whole 9. But at the time I wasn’t any of these.

The tribe had a type of follow-the-leader matrix. Meaning, if a few members tried something new and had some sort of success with it, the rest of the group would hop on it and that thing was integrated into tribe culture.

One could argue that it’s not so bad to follow a positive trend, especially if success was a more than likely outcome. However, from a very young age I found that I was always chasing these fads, desperately wanting to be accepted by the group.

Ironically, the few times I was able to keep up with the fads the group didn’t seem to care and those moments hurt the most. So much that I began to question myself. Asking questions like “Who am I? “. This was something I never asked myself because I never really had the opportunity to explore it. And I didn’t have the answer to the question.

Now that I’m 21, i’m finally getting the answer to some of these questions I had during those years. There’s still a lot of pressure but a couple things that I’ve learned along the way are

1. People will always have something to say, don’t let it bother you.

2. Your authentic self is the only self you need to be, don’t change for anyone.

3. You are on your own personal journey. Wherever you are on this journey is okay, just keep moving forward.