“Be Yourself.”

To be yourself would mean to stick to your true personality, your beliefs, and not shape yourself to be a more attractive individual for another person. The idea of noticing yourself and seeing the confidence and attractiveness you hold first hand. However, sometimes we morph ourselves into a person that isn’t us too many times for others that we lose focus on who we truly are. 

Which raises the question: How can I be myself? The first step to finding out how to be yourself is to discover your self – identity because “if you completely forget [yourself] you’ll never find your way home.” Home here represents your core self identity that some may struggle to discover. 

The Unseen Issue 

The more you do not stick to your core self the more you isolate yourself mentally. There will always be a “shadow” lingering over you to always be a constant reminder that you aren’t displaying your true colors. It raises uncertainty and anxiety within a person and just causes the individual to slowly break down within themselves. These feelings of doubt make a person want to become someone that would be attractive or liked. These emotions are not healthy and should not be normalized or else you will never be able to find your way “home.”

“If I start acting like myself will my friends still like me?”

“If I dress like this maybe I’ll get some compliments.”

“As long as I am liked by others I can keep this facade up!”

The Bittersweet Reality. 

It’s inevitable for certain individuals to be themselves. Some must face the bitter truth that being yourself sometimes will not get the results you desire. For some instances it is better to shape yourself into what you want other people to see you as. For example, if you want to get into a top degree college in your state it’s preferable to be someone that the college wants to accept. To be an individual who has a higher chance of being accepted into the school rather than sticking to your true self that you identify with. Another instance is getting a job, you would not want to be yourself but rather someone who looks too good to pass up to hire. There are many instances in the real world where simple advice like “be yourself” is not applicable and is not possible every single moment of the day.

The Solution? Choose when you want to display your true colors.

Spotify is just one of the many ways to help someone reclaim their own self identity. Spotify is beneficial to the artists and listeners. Artists will devote their time, money, and energy to create a song filled with their strongest emotions that reflect their true core self identity. Artists can do this because they found their “home.” Listeners can open the app Spotify on their phone and tune in with artists. To relate to the artist’s feelings, thoughts, and understand the artist’s identity. Through this the listener can find themselves being in their own “home” and being themselves and focusing on themselves as an individual. To do what makes them confident. 

Spotify can help one reclaim their self identity but can also help you “transport” into your own spiritual world. Any song on Spotify can be a sanctuary for someone, the moment when the song is played they can be transported into a calm state of mind. The beat, rhythm, and lyrics work together to transfer you into your own private spiritual world. With many genres to choose from such as pop, country, rock, kpop, and more, Spotify is literally the escape to a Spiritual world of our own that sometimes we all need. Stressed out from studying? Play some calming music. Sad over a breakup? Play songs made by artists who also went through a breakup to know you’re not alone. 

Sometimes the phrase “just be yourself” can be difficult to follow, because you don’t want to be alone, you want to be loved and liked by others. This feeling can be universal and difficult for a person to deal with. But along the way, being someone who you aren’t will cause you to lose your “home”, or your self-identity and it is not worth it. Sometimes we need solutions like Spotify to escape into our own private fantasy world, and to bring our core self individuality out. However, it all starts with seeing how you want to be as an individual, and to never run away from discovering your true colors.

“This is a way for artists to communicate directly to their fans. If you think of an artist like Bruno Mars, he’s using Spotify, creating playlists and listening to music through it.”

Daniel EK