10 Reasons TO BE Yourself! | Uniqueness Matters

Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is embrace your uniqueness. Over to you, Nina Dobrev. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going. I wake up every morning.

Honestly, I think everyone is different and unique, and that's a good thing. It's not bad. It's kind of the best thing in the world. You don't want to be like everyone else. Growing up in high school and just junior high, just your whole life, really. Either you have been taught to feel like, or you want to be like everyone else because conceptually you'll be included and you'll be like the crowd. But when you think about it, when you look at people like Lady Gaga, who is so crazy and so different and so unique, and her whole message is about, you know, being yourself and being okay with it, and she— The reason she is so successful and so— is because she's talented, because she's different. If she was just like Britney Spears or if she was just like, um, Nina— me, Nina Dobrev, then there would be two of us, so there'd be nothing special about that. So I think what's special is the fact that you're different and is the fact that you're unique and that you can bring something to the table. So if anything, embrace that uniqueness and that, um, that thing that you have that no one else does and expand upon it and make it better and tell everyone about it and be confident in it because if you're confident and happy and smiling, you will attract confidence, happiness, and laughter.

People keep trying to copy the successes of other people because they think it's what's going to make them win. And you can to some extent, you can model success, but if all you're doing is copying somebody, step after step after step, the best you're gonna be is a second or third-rate version of them instead of the best version of you. And this is what's really, really important. As you begin on your path, it's okay to copy other people. You're looking for guidance, you're looking for inspiration, you have no idea how anything is done, and so instead of trying to figure out every single idea yourself, model success, learn from the people who've come before you. It's a fantastic strategy. But if you wanna win the big game, If you want to really be unique and really different and really stand out and really have massive success, it's going to come from you taking these bits of pieces from other people, figuring out what worked for them, and then tweaking them to apply it to your situation. There's a great example I like to reference on the channel, talking about 50 Cent looking at new people coming up through the industry and people sending him demo tapes of people that sound like Lil Wayne. He said, "You sound just like Lil Wayne. I can't tell the difference between you and Lil Wayne. It's amazing. You're talented." sound like Lil Wayne is fantastic. But we already have a Lil Wayne. We don't need a Lil Wayne copycat. So the best you're gonna do here is just be a Lil Wayne cover band. Is that what you wanna do? Where you have uniqueness, you have talent inside you. You can find a way to tweak some of the things that work for Lil Wayne and apply it to your situation to be an amazing artist. I found this when I was working on my YouTube channel and I was working with my agent. I had my agent Steve and I had a media coach Janie who worked at the agency, and they were giving me feedback on how to make better videos. And I would meet with Janie once a week for a year and a half, and I met with Steve maybe once a month looking at different videos. And they would always give me feedback, and totally different style feedback. Steve was always, "Raise the stakes, very aggressive. Why is this so important? What are some things that both would kill themselves before watching this video and you had to make that transition to help them stay alive?" Right? Like, just make it more important. And Janie is leaning on authenticity, understand and be genuine, and a much softer side. And so every time I met with both of them, they would give me different feedback, and they see it through their lens. And I would always take their advice, and I would struggle with it, and I would do exactly what they said. Steve gave me homework, I would do exactly what he asked. Janie gave me homework, I could do exactly what she asked. And it always felt uncomfortable, which was good, stretching your comfort zone, but but it was never quite right for me. And what I had to do was take that awesome piece of advice from Janie and add just a little bit to it. Make it shift so that it worked for me. It felt more authentic, felt more comfortable, felt more Evan. And that's what you need to do. Look at all the strategies of people that have gone out and what they've done before you, it's amazing, and then see how can I make that thing that worked for Steve Jobs work for me? What tweak can I make? To make it authentic and, and uniquely me so that I will have success in this market? Because if you don't do that, again, you're just going to be a copy of somebody else and you're never going to stand out and have massive success. You have amazingness inside you and you need to let that out. Trust that it's there, embrace it, and go all in on it. So the question today is, I'm curious, what have you learned from somebody else that you've modeled and then tweaked What was the tweak? I'm curious. What did you learn, and then how did you tweak it to make it fit and work for you? Leave in the comments below, super curious to find out. I also want to give a quick shout out to Juliet Young. Juliet, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. It really, really, really means a lot to me, and I appreciate the support. I hope you enjoyed the read. Thank you guys again for watching. I hope you have an amazing day. I believe in you and hope you continue to believe in yourself, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot Avento Espresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.

Saying that we have enough artists is like saying we have enough scientists, we have enough designers, we have enough politicians. We have enough politicians. Fair to say. You know, nobody gets to be you except you. Nobody has your point of view. Except you. Nobody gets to bring to the world the things that you get to bring to the world, uniquely get to bring to the world, except you. So saying there are enough writers out there, enough directors out there, enough people with points of view, well yeah, there are, but none of them are you. And none of them, none of those people is going to make the art that you will make. None of them will change people and change the world in the way that you could change it. So if you believe somebody who says, "No, no, we've got enough of those," then all it means is you're giving up your chance to change the world in the way that only you could change it.

Everybody is the same, man. I run into these people, I feel like we— like, nobody's a real, real individual any— like, it's rare that you stumble across someone who's a real individual, and when you do, it's like amazing. And I love seeing people who are just truly themselves. But everybody is like, whatever they see on TV, whatever they see around them, they just wanna be that. And it's like, the world is huge. You don't have to be that. You do not have to be what your neighbor is. You don't have to do what your neighbor is doing. You can do whatever the fuck you want. So people are just like, yeah, rappers feel like they have to be a certain way. Actors feel like they have to be a certain way. People in certain neighborhoods feel like they have to be a certain way 'cause who they around. And I know deep down, like children, children are, are themselves. They react off of instinct until they start to understand how the world is. And humans, I mean, and adults, once they turn into an adult, they start to see like, oh dang, okay, I can't do that, I can't like that no more, I can't be that way 'cause that's not acceptable 'cause I might get looked down upon, they might laugh at me or think I'm weird. And it's like, nah, fuck that, this is what makes you you. This is what makes you you. I just try, and it's hard to do, don't get me wrong, I'm still learning about myself. I'm trying to just, open myself up to new ways of thinking all the time and just truly being myself. 'Cause sometimes I get caught in, there's so many different levels to a matrix, you know what I'm saying? Sometimes you're like, damn, I thought I was out and I was still in.

Right.

Like it's just, but— That's real. But yeah, it's just everybody just feels like they have to be just like everybody else. And when I see rappers, I'm like, come on, dude. They got the same dance. Same dance, dude. The same turnout. And it's like, dude, you got a billion tattoos on your face and body. Where did you get that from? 'Cause I know you didn't come outta your mom's Gina going, "I wanna be tatted." You saw somebody do that and you said, "I wanna do that too 'cause that's gonna make me look like this type of thing, and I wanna be just like that, and everybody's doing it, I know that works, so I'm gonna do it." And now it makes you look like one of them, and now you're not original, and then when your rap career doesn't go far, you're like, "Fuck, what happened?" And then it just, but it's not just rapping, it's just all areas of life.

Staying power means hard work. Staying power means every day you get up, And you try to stay away, stay ahead of the pack and sort of march to the beat of your own drummer. This notion that music becomes homogenized. In other words, there are lots of successful rappers that have short careers because if you can replace one rapper for another, you're done. The more unique you are in what you do, the better your chances of continuing on. So when you take a look at bands, sometimes it's musical, take a look at a band like AC/DC. You hear it, you immediately know what it is. That's what they serve up. You want ballads, go to another band. They serve up straight up— that's what you do. KISS serves up spectacle. We will not sit around on stage on a Persian carpet, light candles, and sing about, "Oh, the flaxen-haired lass and the English countryside." Kill me now. We don't do that. You know, you want nice quiet stay-at-home-with-grandma, pour another glass of water and put her false teeth in it, let the spinach rise to the top. That ain't what we do. We blow stuff up with a drummer and a backbeat. And don't sing about the secret of life because there is none. Here's the secret of life: you're alive and then you're not. That's it. That's the secret. Be glad you're alive. While you're alive, you're allowed to shake the world up a little bit. And that's what you do.