Stop Hiding Yourself

The number one thing I wish more people understood is this:

You have to stop hiding yourself from other people.

Think about every insecurity you’ve carried throughout your life.

Every embarrassing moment.

Every mistake.

Every stupid thing you did when you were 12.

Every time you thought, “If people really knew this about me, they wouldn’t accept me.”

Every part of yourself you’ve tried to hide, fix, manage or pretend didn’t exist.

Now imagine taking all of those insecurities and writing them down.

Then imagine doing the same thing with 100 other people.

Have someone type every insecurity into one huge document.

Then mix them all together.

You wouldn’t be able to find yours.

You’d be scrolling through hundreds of fears, regrets, doubts, shame, embarrassment and self-criticism, thinking:

“Wait… which ones are mine?”

And that is the shock.

We are so much more alike than we think.

The things you believe make you strange, broken, inadequate or different are often the very things another person is secretly struggling with too.

You are hiding because you think everyone else has it figured out.

They’re hiding because they think you have it figured out.

And the strange thing is, you’re both wrong.

We walk around presenting the edited version of ourselves.

The confident version.

The successful version.

The happy version.

The version that has everything together.

Meanwhile, underneath it all, most of us are asking very similar questions:

Am I enough?

Do people really like me?

Am I doing the right thing with my life?

What if I fail?

What if they find out who I really am?

What if I’ve wasted time?

What if I’ve made the wrong choices?

And perhaps the greatest tragedy is that we spend so much of our lives hiding from one another when the very things we’re hiding could be the things that connect us.

Forgive yourself

You also have to forgive yourself.

For the things you did at 12.

For the relationship you stayed in too long.

For the opportunity you didn’t take.

For the person you weren’t ready to be.

For the mistakes you made when you didn’t know what you know now.

You cannot keep punishing your present self for the ignorance of your past self.

You were learning.

You were surviving.

You were doing the best you could with the awareness you had at the time.

Let it go.

And remember: it’s supposed to be a game

We can become incredibly serious about life.

Our careers.

Our relationships.

Our money.

Our status.

Our identity.

Our mistakes.

Our future.

But sometimes we need to step back and remember:

It’s supposed to be fun.

Alan Watts expressed a similar idea: we often take very seriously what was meant to be experienced as play.

Of course, life doesn’t always feel like a game.

When our safety, relationships, identity or sense of belonging feel threatened, everything suddenly becomes serious.

That’s when perspective becomes so important.

You have to remind yourself:

This is my life. I’m here. I’m alive. I’m playing the game.

And maybe the goal isn’t to play it perfectly.

Maybe the goal is to play it fully.

To love more.

To risk more.

To laugh more.

To say what you actually think.

To stop pretending.

To stop hiding.

To forgive yourself.

To let people see you.

Because one day, the things you were so terrified people would discover about you may turn out to be the very things that make someone else feel less alone.

You are not as different as you think you are.

You are not as broken as you think you are.

And you don’t have to spend your life hiding.

Take off the mask.

Step into the game.

And play.