Believe me, we’ve all been there at some point or another -- striving to be at the top tier of the status quo and thriving on any ounce of positive attention we receive. We would beg our parents to buy us every single piece of clothing, the new album from “our” favorite artist, and the latest (and coolest) piece of technology.

We would state that it would be, “the end of the world,” if we didn’t get it. We would do anything we could do to further inch away from the “out” crowd and more towards the “in” crowd. We envied the people who were popular, and we wanted to be just like them and have as many friends as they did. When we were younger, we didn't care about being in the "in" crowd. Then once middle school and high school hit, we began to care.

“Fitting in,” became the only thing that mattered to us. Any time we could (slowly) but surely move up on the popularity totem pole, we did so with a big smile on our faces. It felt good to be accepted because in junior high and high school, social acceptance was/still is considered everything. But, I’m here to tell you that all of this madness has got to stop -- and it can.

Here is one myth we need to rid ourselves of ASAP: social acceptance is everything. We cannot continue to find confidence in how many likes we receive on a picture we posted on Instagram, or how many retweets/favorites a tweet of our's receives. There is so much more to life than being socially accepted.

All throughout high school, I was never socially accepted as much as I wanted to be. I moved to a new school freshman year. It was a brand new and clean slate.

You would think that by starting off on a clean slate, it would’ve been easy to just “fit in” and make numerous friends that would become my best friends for all of high school. That is where you’re wrong. I could’ve never been more wrong than having that mindset. I wanted to fit in so badly, but I simply couldn’t.

As cliché as it sounds, I was born to stand out. And guess what? So were you. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried to bond with the “in” crowd, we repelled one another. I always thought that maybe it had something to do with me, but honestly, it didn’t. The popular crowd just hadn’t realized that we were not meant to conform to the patterns of this world.

God wrote it in the Bible, and the Bible is full of truth we should cling to. We were all put on this planet for a purpose, and that purpose is not for all of us to be the same. If we were all the same, the world could not function properly. Even identical twins are not completely identical. Face it: you were born to stand out.

Something we need to remind ourselves of is this: we don’t need to strive to be like the people that are better than us, because there will always be someone better. We need to strive to be a better us. It is so easy to get caught up in what we aren’t good at, but just think: what if we took that negative energy we put towards being upset about not feeling sufficient enough, and turned it into positive energy to better ourselves at what we are good at? You can be the jack of all trades, but the master of none.

If there is something I want you to take from this letter, then take this while holding it tight to your heart:

You were meant to be you. Be you wholeheartedly, and love yourself. Be confident in who you are, because you are truly special. There is nobody else identical to you on this earth, so why not embrace yourself? Make your own decisions based on what you personally are interested in, not what the popular crowd is interested in. Dance in the rain, go to that midnight premiere, listen to the music you enjoy, rock that red lipstick in the halls, and get the haircut you’ve always wanted. You only get four years of high school, and if you do them right and live them well, your four years will have been well spent knowing you cared less about social acceptance, and more about what truly matters (you).

You do you, kid.