Can you hear it?
The life rhythm in your head? The one that is all your own?
It keeps you marching toward a more exciting and rewarding life, if you just let it play.
Your own drum beat inspires you to do your thing your way.
The world says follow the rhythm of the big drum, the one it plays for everyone.
Walk to the same basic beat it hammers into us from kindergarten on.
It’s “safe.” It’s “normal.”
But what fun is that?
Especially when you don’t really want to just walk through life.
You want to march. With style. And you should.
Your mental and physical health will benefit greatly. Here’s why:
- Authenticity: marching to the beat of your own drum keeps you honest. Honest with yourself and honest with others. To truly be yourself in a world of social media comparison and a revolving bombardment of social norms can be tough. The more life you live the more you may realize that “be yourself” really is good advice. Your mental health is bolstered through increased self awareness and acceptance. Commitment to living life according to your own values and needs teaches you to be gratifyingly vulnerable, transparent, accountable, and real.
- Creativity: marching to the beat of your own drum is mentally stimulating. By nature, the process of tuning into yourself and moving to that unique beat is stimulating. You create something original every time you filter the world’s values, norms, perceptions, and pressures to make something meaningful of your life and your energies.
- Community: marching to the beat of your own drum draws people to you. People who appreciate what you have to offer help make life much more fulfilling. Your own drum beat makes you distinctive and individual, but you can still belong to a close community when you do your own thing. Satisfying relationships are much more likely when you are yourself, warts and all. Someone following his or her own path is often viewed as interesting, strong, and a person to be respected.
- Flexibility: marching to the beat of your own drum creates resilience. The ability to bounce back, change course, or accept a situation so that you can learn and grow comes with learning to be yourself. Marching to your own drum beat is a courageous decision to swim against the social current. This teaches you how to accept that sometimes you don’t have the answers. Sometimes you’ll fail. Sometimes you’ll be misunderstood, or no one will “get” you. But your commitment to being yourself can allow experience teach you, inform you, and make your march that much sweeter.
- Liberty: marching to the beat of your own drum is often stress-free. Unencumbered by societal convention, you can extend to yourself the compassion and acceptance you may have withheld in the past. It’s okay to be. It’s okay to change. It’s okay to just be okay. There is freedom in not having to keep up with the Joneses or the Kardashians or your older brother.
The stress of measuring up falls away when you turn up the bass and march your way.
Your own drum beat doesn’t include the usual sort of criticism or disapproval.
Your beat just invites you and encourages you to keep marching.
Head up, shoulders back, and rocking your own beat.
“Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see. Judge yourself and you see judges everywhere. But if you listen to the sound of your own voice, you can rise above doubt and judgment. And you can see forever.”
~Nancy Lopez, first woman to receive the France’s Ouimet Award for lifelong contributions to golf.
