What do cookie cutters and stencils have in common?
They're comfortable. They allow us to stay between the lines and avoid "messing up". The problem: we take them too far.
Cue the idiom "cookie cutter". Meaning: marked by sameness and lacking originality (according to the ever-so-trusty Urban Dictionary). News flash, WE ALL DO IT. We subconsciously conform to these cookie cutter images that we are surrounded by, as if our personality is one of the options on a shelf we're allowed to choose from. Challenge: move away from the shelf.
It seems simple when we're young. As a child, my mom asked me what I wanted to be painted on my walls and I told her dancing dinosaurs. Behold. Dinosaurs in tutus on my wall. Fast forward. As a freshman, I remember talking to one of my friends saying, "I just wanted to keep being a cheerleader and watch football and wear a baseball cap to class and lipstick at night and do squats and eat cheeseburgers and be a sorority girl and a bro." Her response: "Do it then."
Each person brings something to the table that is different from everyone else. Think about what kind of world we would live in if Albert Einstein thought it wasn't cool to be into science or Martin Luther King Jr. never spoke up about his dream. Challenge the status quo. I'll leave you with a quote that I leave hanging on my mirror so I don't forget:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us. It's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” -Marianne Williamson
Be who you are, liberate others. Eat cookies, don't be them.
