Throughout our lives, people come and go, but they always leave a mark, for better or worse. Sure, people like your parents, siblings, or the friend you've known since preschool may have had a much greater impact on you than an exchange student you befriended, but each person that has played a role in our lives has become a little part of us.

This is usually why, around middle school, your mom tells you to watch less TV in hopes of minimizing the chances of you picking up Alex Russo's work ethic. Then in freshman year of high school, she might tell you to stop hanging out with Lexi because she's "bad news." We often don't realize how much control others have on the people we become, whether they are doing it intentionally or not. As we learn to know ourselves, we compare ourselves to others, battling between who we are and who we are trying to be.

To me, life is shaped like a funnel: the older you get, the more you have to narrow yourself down. Sounds pessimistic, I know, but with options like what sport you want to play, where you want to go to college, what you want to study, and eventually, what you want to make of your life, come decisions. It's once you've made these narrowing decisions that you start doubting them and comparing yourself to those who went a different route, seeking validation that you made the right choice, even if it seemed obvious at first.

Let's face it, you might not see it, but nobody knows you like you know yourself. The reason you ever did anything without self-doubt is because at that time, it was exactly what you wanted to do. Remember that if you let yourself take a break when you were studying for that midterm, it was because you needed it. Maybe you could have known your shit better if you hadn't, who knows, but it's not solely because Rebecca studied that extra half hour that she did better. In that moment, you knew that you had pushed yourself as much as you could.

Why let an entirely different person's performance make you re-evaluate yours?

That being said, people can't only have a bad influence on you; far from it, in fact. My friends have taught me a large majority of the things that keep me happy in life, even if they were only in my day to day life for a few months. It's important to let people in, especially because the ideas family members pass on are not necessarily the right ones for you. Growing up, my dad wanted me to be ahead of my math class because he always was. While getting everything done early made me feel confident in what I was doing, it was too much to handle. My friends showed me simply through their actions that I could be just as well off following their pace, which gave me more time to focus on the things that felt important to me.

It's essential for us to stay realistic and true to who we are, but we also need to acknowledge what we need to improve on. From my control issues to my close-mindedness to my shyness, other people's influence has helped me tackle my flaws and (hopefully) dim them. Maybe you don't know who you are at all, or you focus too much on who you are to others. That's still no excuse to become somebody you know you're not, or even worse, project your insecurities onto others. Of course, it's up to us to take a step back and decide whether or not we let somebody affect us, but it's also our job to know how we are affecting others.

As we grow, we learn to take the best parts of the people around us, while inevitably making some errors in judgement along the way. All in all, remember that you do not need to sacrifice a part of yourself to learn something from others. There is no single right way to do anything, so as long as you're confident in what you're doing and performing at a level that satisfies you, there is no reason to doubt yourself.