Derek Sivers Quotes

Anybody who told you to be yourself simply couldn't have given you worse advice.

You've always made the mistake of being yourself.

Get to know the real you, rather than try to look like or dress like those around you.

Often we're recreating what we think we're supposed to be as human beings. What we've been told we're supposed to be, instead of who we authentically are. The key about the creation of full self-expression is to be authentically who you are, to project that.

I have a fear of labels. If someone labels me, I have to respond - do I acknowledge it, reject it, deny it, live up to it, and defy it? Labels can affect your ability to be yourself. If you're not careful, like I wasn't when I was young, that can take a toll on you. You find yourself conforming to everyone else's ideas of who you are.

I've tried not to get too bogged down by what people want you to be.

I think that most of the women when they dress in the morning, they try to be someone elseToday there is too much retouching, and I don't like it...except on me.

Well, I try my best to be just like I am, But everybody wants you to be just like them, They sing while you slave and I just get bored

What does it mean to be yourself?” he asked. “If it means to do what you think you ought to do, then you’re doing that already. If it means to act like you’re exempt from society’s influence, that’s the worst advice in the world; you would probably stop bathing and wearing clothes. The advice to ‘be yourself’ is obviously nonsense. But our brains accept this tripe as wisdom because it is more comfortable to believe we have a strategy for life than to believe we have no idea how to behave.

What’s the difference between spending your life trying to be invisible, or pretending to be the person you think everyone wants you to be? Either way, you’re faking.

Always try to be yourself.

Everybody wants to be fancy and new. Nobody wants to be themselves. I mean, maybe people want to be themselves, but they want to be different, with different clothes or shorter hair or less fat. It's a fact. If there was a guy who just liked being himself and didn't want to be anybody else, that guy would be the most different guy in the world and everybody would want to be him.

The greatest fear people have is that of being themselves. They want to be 50 Cent or someone else. They do what everyone else does even if it doesn’t fit where and who they are. But you get nowhere that way; your energy is weak and no one pays attention to you. You’re running away from the one thing that you own – what makes you different. I lost that fear. And once I felt the power that I had by showing the world I didn’t care about being like other people, I could never go back.

I don't have any option. I'm not going to be less gay or more pretty. I can't try to have less personality or fewer controversial opinions.

Apparently God makes us all different. Some of us are happy to respond to His individual touch on our lives by remaining individuals, and others of us are intimidated or frightened into trying to become like each other so that we have company, so that we don't feel so lonely.

It's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.

Self-conscious? Try a wig, a corset, a veil, a beard. Or cultivate shamelessness.

We should know mankind better if we were not so anxious to resemble one another.

I'm just being who I am and expressing myself as everyone else does.

Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans. We have learned to live our life trying to satisfy other people's demands. We have learned to live by other people's points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.

I am startled when people are themselves and are not my thoughts of them.

People are expecting me to be a certain way all the time. It's not like if I come in here with a totally different personality and right before the camera starts they see this new character. It confuses everything. Life has a consensus reality to it and if you use that to your advantage it makes it much easier.

If you're trying to be something you're not, whether it's an age or a certain type of personality, you're just going to be in misery. You have to own who you are, and part of who you are is your age.

Be your authentic self. Your authentic self is who you are when you have no fear of judgment, or before the world starts pushing you around and telling you who you're supposed to be. Your fictional self is who you are when you have a social mask on to please everyone else. Give yourself permission to be your authentic self.

Telling others about oneself is...no simple matter. It depends on what we think they think we ought to be like