Your Friends Don't Really Matter

Earlier this year I read about a prank a psychology class played on their professor in which they began playing closer attention to the professor when he walked to the left, and started looking away or looking down when he walked to the right. After only half an hour or so, the professor was so trained by the class to teach on the left side of the room that he was teaching, no kidding, from the door of the classroom.

If we're honest with ourselves, we will admit that the opinion of other people has an incredible power over what we wear, what we believe and even what we think about. We are foolish to think our sense of fashion, our ideas and even our personal tastes aren't greatly influenced by those around us. To some degree, and I think to a very large degree, we are drawn to the ideas, the clothes and even the artistic sensibilities that will gain us the most favor from our peers.

Unless our peers are influencing us to live unhealthy lives, there's not much harm in this….Except, except that what gets lost when we live like dogs trying to get a treat is our true selves. When our personalities develop "in order to be liked or validated" we lose a sense of who we actually are. What if we like both Bon Iver and Taylor Swift? What if we don't want to wear skinny jeans because they make our private parts hurt?

Of course, we tend to admire the people who don't seem to care, and yet the people who we think don't care are actually the people who care the most. The people who really don't care are fifty pounds overweight and buy their clothes from Target. And yet they know themselves, they aren't as needy as the rest of us, aren't as desperate for validation. Those are the people who are truly free.

Your Friends Don't Really Matter is a post from: Donald Miller's Blog