Don’t Settle For Fake Or Subpar Friends! Find Your Tribe And Flourish!

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This morning during a casual exchange a friend mentioned that people in our circle are doing a new thing. Together. All of them. So why wasn’t I there?

No one invited me.

After some stammering and awkwardness on my friend’s part and some painful feelings of disappointment on mine, we moved on.

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Don’t Settle For Fake Or Subpar Friends! Find Your Tribe And Flourish!

I’m well aware of this new activity, and that I wasn’t invited. Social media makes secrets hard to keep. What hurt? That of the group only one person wondered where I was. One person out of this group of people wanted to hang out with me.

Back in high school when I was dealing with severe depression I kept telling myself, “It’ll get better. All I have to do is survive school and then this is over.”

I would never go back and tell younger-me that no, it does not get better. There are still fake friends in your life as an adult. There are still clicks and groups who will not accept you. Life is still full of disappointment.

What I would go back and tell myself is that…it’s easier to find your tribe. The weird moms. The couples who don’t want to have kids. The geeky adults. People who get your obsession with Pinterest or pumpkin spice or yoga or crossfit or Star Wars or (fill in the blank here with your thing).

Back in high school and college my social circle was determined by the people who were at my school. Considering that I’m plain weird, I was born this way, even my mother agrees that as a young, out of the womb child, I didn’t do the things normal babies did. I was born different–and that’s okay. I’m not alone.

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The greatest lie we’re told is that we are alone.

That no one gets us.

That no one wants to be with us.

That we aren’t valuable because we’re different.

That is such a load of bull.

Some of the greatest minds and contributors to our world are the different people. The ones who didn’t fit in. The ones who were weird. No, I’m not saying I’m some sort of modern Jane Austen and years from now everyone will praise my contribution to literature. What I’m saying is that…I’m not alone.

And neither are you.

Social media is both the greatest and worst thing.

It sucks up our time. It creates unnecessary drama. It propagates the spread of false information because the average user won’t google a post before resharing it.

But it also connects our pockets of weird. I’m super lucky that we have a weekly board game night. Very different, eclectic people, and we mostly found each other through social media. Social media has shrunk the world and now…our pockets of weird can reach across states and oceans to say, “Hi, weird and different people, we’re like you!”

So as painful as it is to be left out of something and to find myself on the outside of a social situation I used to be part of…that’s okay. Sometimes we try to be part of a tribe, a group, a click and it’s just not for us. If I think super hard about it…I didn’t really enjoy myself when I was with them. Yeah, I liked certain parts of hanging out with them, but…it was a lot more stressful than enjoyable.

I think we get so caught up sometimes in the latest Pinterest or Instagram must-do-thing that we lose sight of what we enjoy and what makes us unique. Embrace your weird. Embrace what you like. And find people who like your weird. Your different. Your unique. Because the world needs more people who lead change and fewer who follow it.

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One Comment

  1. Thank you for this article, as I feel out of place as a mom who gave up a FT job over a year ago and trying to navigate through the world of moms at my kids school. It’s high school all over again! I am a total misfit in comparison as I don’t see things they way they do.

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