Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome to episode 56 of Working towards our

purpose. In today's episode, we are going to talk about

fitting into molds. But before we get into that, I'm going to do a little

check in, as we always do, and check in with

yourself, see where you're at today, see if you see how you're feeling.

For myself, if I check in, I think

I've. Yeah, I've definitely been pretty

hard on myself this week for specific things

and trying to not take that too

much to heart, trying to let it pass through me. I know that it's a

pattern that I have. So, yeah, trying. Trying to keep

moving forward in spite. But,

yeah, I think it's important to kind of see where

you're at. So check in with yourself before we get into today's episode

and hopefully you've done that

and now we're going to get into

talking about fitting into molds.

So I think, you know, we're kind of all brought into this world

with some sort of mold, some sort of, like,

idea for our life. You know, our parents certainly

have ideas for us when we first are born.

You know, maybe they want us to be a

soccer player or be good at sports or be a musician.

Some parents want their kids to be doctors and lawyers and

have good jobs and go to college and all this stuff.

But I think sometimes we forget that, like, all these

sort of expectations are. Can

be outside influences. And, you know, not only is it like our

parents and our friends and stuff, but certainly there's societal

expectations of many

different things, not even like college and jobs and like, what you

should be doing to be a good person. And, you know, what's

acceptable, what's not acceptable, but even just, like, where you're born

and what state or what country, what religion and race,

there's all these sort of presets that you have when you're born,

and some of them positive, some of them obviously negative.

And I think it's important to

think about separating ourself from that

or at least just acknowledging that it's. It's part of

circumstance and it doesn't have to be like our story,

at least for, you know, some things and most things. But,

you know, another thing that I think sort of

creates this mold around us is this is the worst. Like,

advertisers, I can't stand,

like, ads and advertisements and,

you know, basically influencing people that you need this certain thing, this

certain thing's gonna make you happy, this thing's gonna make your life better,

and it's people's Jobs to, like, convince you of that. And

regardless of if it actually is or isn't, you

know, certainly, you know, fast food, it probably isn't making our

lives better, but, you know, it's so ingrained into our

life and it's just, I don't know,

like, you question the intentions of the companies behind the people that are creating

these advertisements to make you think certain ways. And

I mean, even nowadays with social media and influencers, it's

interesting that that's the term that we use is influencers because

it's people who influence us that we should be doing this

or should be buying this. And it's quite

interesting. Like, that's, that's like a negative term, influencers.

To me, like, it seems like somebody who's influencing you to do something

is possibly, I guess it could be a positive influence, but like,

I don't know, I guess maybe to me it sounds negative. So, yeah, it's just.

Just weird. We have all these. All these things coming externally

from all around us, like, constantly bombarded with

ads every single day and, yeah.

Trying to tell us, like, you know, where we should fit in, how we should

live, what mold we should be. So

in today's episode, I just kind of want to talk about maybe

sort of separating yourself from the mold or realizing, like, if

that mold is for you or not for you.

So a couple, couple stories for me come to

mind. When I was in elementary school

and middle school and even into high school,

me and my brother were really into nascar and we pretty much

wore NASCAR shirts like, every day. And I

remember constantly getting made fun of for wearing

NASCAR shirts. And most people where I lived in my town

just weren't into nascar. And for whatever reason, me and my brother really

were. And so that's like, that's like

one sort of thing. Like, you know, I'm not fitting into the mold of, like,

what the other kids like. The other kids liked Yu Gi oh and Pokemon and

like, all that stuff, but that never interested me. I like nascar.

So, like, when you don't fit in that mold,

you could get made fun of. You could be shown as different.

That could negatively affect you. For some reason, the

NASCAR one never really did. I kind of just always laughed and I

was like, you're playing card games. I'm into nascar. It's like real life.

That's cool. So, yeah, not

really sure where the attitude came from, but

another example would be finishing high school and everybody's going to college.

I remember always saying I was never going to go to college. I Didn't like

school. I didn't want to further go to school.

But yeah, I ended up going to college. And I think it was another sort

of just looking at the people around you and, okay,

everybody's going to college. What am I going

to do? Maybe I don't have a better idea. Maybe I should just do what

everybody else is doing because, you know, I, I can't.

I can't answer what I want to do or I didn't spend enough

time thinking about what I wanted to do. Um, and so then I ended up

going to college, going into corporate America, same sort of thing.

I remember just being really confused and, and this is like where the

mold thing really like started to make sense to me because

especially at my first job, like every. Everybody sort of

acted a certain way. They all like, I don't know,

they all just like, kind of became the same person.

Like, they all started watching the same TV shows. They all started like buying

the same cars. It was really interesting. I literally was in a group where like,

everybody kept buying the same truck. And it's just

interesting how like those things affect you and influence you and the

people around you. So, yeah, anyways,

just being really uncomfortable in that corporate mold because I didn't fit

it. And I was trying to like, force myself to fit into that mold, but

it wasn't working. And finally I did make a change.

And then the last sort of story that comes to mind is a recent interaction

that I've had with somebody which kind of spawned the idea for this episode

of fitting into molds. And I hadn't seen this person in a while

and we were just sort of having a conversation. He was kind of asking like,

what I've been up to. So I started like talking about what I was

doing, what, you know, what I was caring about. I

was trying to show up as an authentic version of myself.

And yeah, it was just sort

of. There was nothing like negative said, but it was sort of the

facial expressions of like,

confusion and the non participation

in the conversation of like, what I, you know, kind of was

talking about. The, the lack of like

questioning perhaps of like, or interest or even just interest in

like what I was saying. So it made me feel like

I should like, change myself because

at the end of the day, we, we as humans want to be accepted. So

especially in real life, it's really hard for me sometimes to

show up in the way that I want when I'm, you know, being judged

by other people. And this was like a real

life example of like telling Somebody, something kind of seeing

the, like, disapproval or like, confusion in their face. And

then that kind of goes into

the non approving. And then I found myself trying to, like, back

my way out of it and being like, oh, well, here's. Here's something like, maybe

this will make you feel better. Maybe this will make you feel better. And so

anyways, I walked away from the conversation, like, not liking how I

showed up in the conversation and being sort of frustrated with myself

and mostly being frustrated because I, like,

noticed that disappointment or disapproval

from this person. And then I, like, tried to

change myself to make it better for them.

And I didn't want to do that. So I thought about it for a while

and I talked about it with some close friends

and

it came down to, like, a mold

thing. And I keep using this word mold because it just is a visual

representation. But, like, I didn't fit the mold of

what this person had in their head and

vice versa. Maybe I. He probably maybe

didn't fit, like, how I would want to live my life. But. And that's okay

because we all have different molds and we should have

different molds. Like, we shouldn't all be the same person. And

I think where I sort of.

Where it sort of made sense for me is when I put myself in their

shoes and was just confused because

my, like, what I was saying didn't make sense to them. And

like, that again, goes back to, like, the mold thing. Like, I

wasn't fitting into this mold, so therefore they were confused. And then I took

the confusion as, like, disapproval. Even if it may not have been,

it could have just been pure confusion. But, yeah, it's

just interesting how we all kind of have these

ideas of, like, how people should show up or what people should be doing or

what people shouldn't be doing. So,

yeah, it just really made me think more about

how sometimes if you are a person who doesn't

fit the mold of, like, what everybody else is doing, right? I don't

have this corporate job in the degree that I went

to school for. That could confuse some people. And that can make people

disapprove of what I'm doing. But that's okay because

that's what their mold is. And I'm creating my own mold

right now. I'm figuring out what my own mold is. So

today in this episode, I want to challenge you to take

ownership of your own mold and

to think about that. If I thought about myself

when I was still working my corporate job, I ended up there because

of decisions that I made for other people.

They weren't my own decisions. They weren't. They

weren't really what I wanted to do. I mean, I. I knew in high school

I didn't want to go to college. So where I led myself

was a place that I wasn't really happy with.

So, you know, I would tell that person, like, to. To take ownership

of your own mold and, and how do we do that? I think,

again, it kind of comes back to, like, decision making we talked about in the.

The previous two episodes in episode

54, 54 and

53. Had to do some math in my head real quick.

But in the decision making, like, you know, when you're

just. Even if you're like, deciding to buy something or deciding to go for a

career or a job or start a business, I think

there's sort of a couple different things that, like,

you can do. So I have like, four things in my notes here.

And the first step is to realize that you can be different. Because. Because I

think the pressure of being different sometimes causes people to

make decisions that they don't really want to make. And

just realizing, like, you know, having the

authority to make your own decisions and to be different is

okay. I think it's a strong suit. I think it's a good thing to be

your own unique individual. You don't have to be like everybody else.

I think we all crave that at the end of the day, but, you

know, maybe we don't. Next thing is like,

you know, if you're thinking about what are your

own desires versus somebody else's desires, and

if we take an example, like, like buying a car,

if you're going to buy a car, like, maybe you can ask yourself, like,

why am I buying this car? Why do I want this car? And if it

kind of comes back to, like, what, well, this other person has this car and

they liked it. Or maybe it's a status symbol.

Maybe I want somebody to think that I have money.

Or, you know, if those are the reasons as to why you're buying a car,

well, maybe those aren't your own desires. Maybe

you can challenge yourself and think more like, well,

what are my own desires? What do I really want? Another thing,

the third thing would be values. And like, what are your own

values? And. And this is something that I keep coming back to also is, like,

what are your values? I think it can be

easy to think of other people's values as your

values. And especially if you don't

put some time to thinking about what your own values are. You

could easily think

that maybe your values are somebody else's values. But

yeah, if you practice thinking about, like, what your values are, like, are the decisions

that you're making in alignment with your own values.

And then I think the last thing would be your

own intuition, using your own intuition. And

again, this can be confused with other people's voices. You know, we all have

voices in our heads of our parents, of society. How

can you differentiate between those voices and

the intuition that you have? And in my experience,

when you have sort of thoughts and you're thinking about something and it's very

loud and, you know, it's

like there's a sense of urgency to it, and it's like

a thought that like, keeps coming up. And it's not

necessarily your intuition. And for me, my intuition

comes very quietly. And it comes when I'm

still and rested, um,

and quiet. It kind of like just sneaks in. It's like a

little, little voice that kind of whispers. And, you know,

that to me is my intuition. Whereas if, like, I'm, you know, sort

of panicky about something and I'm trying to make a decision quick, and there's a

voice in my head that's like, loud, yelling at me to do this, that's usually

not my voice. It's usually somebody else's. So trying to

differentiate between your intuition and your,

you know, other. Other voices that could be possibly going around in your head.

And then also now I'm

just thinking about it now we can add a fifth to this list of

trying to figure out, you know, whether it's us or from

outside of us is fear versus,

like, faith or trust. I think a lot of times when we make decisions based

off of fear, it's also leads us to

sort of fall into other people's

molds and the things that you are familiar with. So if you're

sort of acting out of fear, it could be easy to

make a decision that is maybe somebody else's comes

externally. You know, if I'm thinking of, like, going to college,

that decision for me was made out of fear because I

didn't know what I wanted to do. So, you know, I

at first thought, like, I'm not going to go to college. But, you know, as

it gets closer, as there's more pressure that builds, and it's like, what are you

going to do with your life? You know, I think I

acted out of fear and decided to go to college just

based on the other people around me. And I think it can

become easy to kind of just look to see what everybody else is doing

when you're acting in a state of fear and

not rely on your own self, your own intuition, your own

values, your own desires. So, yeah,

I think that this is just something that kind of came up for me this

week, and I think it's important to

say. I think it's important to say that you don't have to fit

the mold of everybody else, and it's okay

to design your own mold and to design your own life and to,

you know, find your own happiness within that. Because I think that it

becomes pretty hard to find happiness when you

are trying to fit into somebody else's mold. Um,

so, yeah, and. And another

thing I want to add on top of that, too, is that we do all

have the power to create our own life and our own mold and

our own decisions that make us happy. And, yeah, I

think the more we look externally for answers,

the more confusion is set upon

us. At least it was for me. So there's one

other thing that I was trying to think about that slipped my mind as I

was talking. I'm trying to see if it can come back before I

have to end this.

Oh, yes. The last thing is that I think

that when you.

When you decide to not fit into other people's molds, you will

be challenged. And you will have people

who either look at you confused and kind

of disapprovingly or some people that even just, like, make fun of you and,

you know, tell you that you're wrong and are

threatened by the way that you live your life, and

that's okay. Like, I think. I think

that that's just kind of something to note, because I've

noticed that, like, you know, you tell somebody what you're doing, and if it

doesn't fit into, like, a really simple answer,

oh, I'm an engineer. I work at this. I'm a lawyer.

I do this. Then, you know, people have opinions.

And I think I would say that, like,

if you're finding, like, that resistance in communicating with people and telling people what

you're doing and that sort of thing, I would say some advice

is don't take anything too seriously from

somebody who you aren't very close with and don't

know that they care about you because their opinions at the end of the

day, and, you know, you can easily

let them affect you because it hurts when somebody's, like, you know,

rude to you or mean. But

I try to only value the opinions of people that I know that care about

me and that I'm close with. And those

people certainly never intentionally try to,

you know, belittle me. So, yeah, I just wanted

to say that, like, I think sometimes when you don't fit into people's molds,

that you will find resistance and to not

take it personally and to just know that, you know, other people are living their

own lives and you can just kind of focus back in on what you're doing

and not focus on anything that. That they're trying

to maybe take away from you. So. So, yeah, that's. That's

all I got for you today. And

thank you for listening, as always. Thank you for watching on

YouTube, and I will see you in another episode real soon. Take care,

Sam.