Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Taken

It's tempting to imitate others who seem to be or have greater success than your own. There is also strong pressure to conform to what everyone else is wearing, doing, or saying. Either way you deny your own individuality in deference to a way of being that you think is better than your way. 

The truth is, nobody else in the 7 billion humans currently on earth is exactly like you, and if they tried to be like you they would be a poor copy. You are unique! You represent a complex assortment of skills, knowledge, life experience, and views that can combine to produce outcomes in the world that no other person could duplicate.

Rather than trying to be a clone of someone else, be a dev!ant instead. That is, be different in positive ways.

You may not be familiar with Buckminster Fuller, who invented the geodesic dome, but he very nearly committed suicide following a series of business and personal failures. Fortunately for the world he did not, because he made significant contributions to the world over his lifetime. 

What saved him was the realization that if he worked on things no one else was doing, the Universe would take care of him, and it seems to have done so.

Like Fuller, dare to pave new paths, go in directions not yet taken. Always lead the herd, rather than following. Leaders get noticed. Members of herds are not.