The expression of self is a true wonderment when it comes to building one's character.
Thoughts and feelings that live in our subconscious minds bring themselves to the surface when expressing our truest selves.
Things we experienced as children that we may not even have any conscious recollection of will often play a role in how we express ourselves later into adulthood when no-one is looking.
But what about when people are looking?
We were all socially trained at some point growing up to operate within the world and become what are considered to be "civilized" humans.
In other words, we are taught manners, how to speak to people, how to treat others etc.
What I find interesting is that as humans, most of us never truly speak our own thoughts all of the time.
Think about how many times you met someone and thought to yourself, "this person might actually be an idiot", but instead you smile and play along.
If we all spoke our thoughts all of the time, we would not be civilized humans.
Have you ever had a friend you were envious of?
It seems like everything good is going for them all of the time, so you give them verbal praise but in your mind you're thinking the opposite of what you are telling them.
While feelings like envy are deeply rooted in our own insecurities, we aren't going to lose a friend over some mindless thought.
I have referred to people playing different characters in recent blogs.
What I mean by different characters is we are often not the same people at work that we are at home.
We are not the same people in front of our friends or our spouses that we are when we are alone.
We suppress our creative side as we continue to get older because we fall into the duties of everyday life.
Who has time to be creative when they are working 40-50 hours per week and supporting a family?
The answer is, not many.
As children, we all had a creative side and an immense imagination.
I am sure you had an imaginary friend or two when you were growing up.
We used to come up with games to play with other kids right on the spot and we all contributed to the game in our own ways.
Now people have to wake up before the sun even comes up to go to a job that they don't even like.
Some people like what they do for a living, including myself, but for the sake of this argument, I am making a generalization.
We begin to lose our creativity and our imagination as we age and this is partially due to becoming socially programmed to be a certain way in certain situations.
When we look at the creative minds of the world today such as actors, artists, and musicians, they express themselves through their art form.
My experiences in live entertainment showed me this, even in dancing.
Watching people dance was like getting a front row seat into their subconscious.
The way people move and flow when they dance and the creativity behind their art form is a form of self-expression.
One thing is for sure, when we were younger, we couldn't wait to get older, and now that were older, we wish we were kids again.
This is an experience I would argue almost everyone has had at one point.
Now that were old and have responsibility, we secretly yearn for the times we had no responsibility, and our creativity and imagination were at their peak.
As children, we didn't care about not expressing our truest selves, we just were.
We weren't thinking about paying bills, we were thinking about coming up with a new game to play.
We often suppress expressing our truest selves as we get older because most people are afraid of what others would think if they saw the real them.
As I mentioned above, if people knew everything we were thinking when we were thinking it, we would have no-one to confide in.
We would lose people close to us if we truly just spoke every thought that came to our minds when they arrived.
This doesn't mean we still can't be creative.
Yes, practicing self-control, self-discipline, and having control over our emotions is much more prevalent to be able to go out into the world and be useful, but this doesn't mean we have to stop being creative or suppressing our imagination.
Being able to think big and dream big is exactly how people become successful in life and for most people, they simply don't dream big enough like they did when they were children.
I have always loved being creative.
I get a sense a joy for having a large imagination, even to this day.
One thing I am learning is how to channel my imagination into my work.
Because while I may not be putting wigs on to do doing impressions and writing my own comedy sketches anymore, I am learning new ways to harness my creativity in my work.
Everything is a learning process and your willingness and diligence to get things done will ultimately determine if you end up successful or not.
There is nothing wrong with expressing yourself, but you have to be able to do it within reason.
Both men and women have masculine and feminine traits, and it is okay to express these traits - again, within reason because you still have a job to do.
It is okay for men to be soft, caring, and loving to those around him, but if he lacks control over his emotions, his emotions will ultimately get the best of him.
It is also okay for a woman to be confident and display a sense of wittiness, but if she loses sight of her true feminine qualities, the strive for independence will become more prominent.
We all have our truest selves and the ability to display our most authentic selves to the world is how we will be able to gain the trust and respect from others.
We can't go into the world being completely fake to people, because we are just going to attract more fake into our lives.
We also can't go around speaking every thought that comes into our minds to everyone around us, because we will offend and push others away.
Self-expression is a matter of finding balance - balance between being as authentic as possible, but still being able to practice self-control.