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6 Norms You Don’t Have to Meet

I’m preoccupied with challenging the norms and arbitrary measures society deems worthy.

Our culture reveres the wrong things, prioritizing capital over community, hierarchy over equality, and individualism over the collective good. We overpay the wrong people and deny those who most need our support.

I take deep, personal offense that those who "fail" to live according to a random set of conditions get penalized by society, rewarding only those who comply with outdated systems and notions of achievement.

This narrow framework limits growth, potential, and freedom, valuing a fixed linearity for success marked by random external measures. It insists there is only one right way to be a person and penalizes those who don’t fit.

Many people are miserable because they lack the external markers of success.

They are trapped inside the tyranny of the "should." They should be happy but aren’t; they should be married but are single; they should be wealthy but are struggling. These egregious "shoulds" convince people they’re doing life wrong and that they’re failures.

Our beliefs are formed slowly, over time, through the lens of those who raised us. Many of us carry this view forever, without ever considering whether or not we agree. We are conditioned to believe our worth relies on external metrics rather than internal measures of value.

But what if we stopped and questioned everything we were raised to believe? What if we asked ourselves: Maybe I’m miserable because I’m measuring myself against norms I don’t agree with?

It’s time to take stock of the values our culture considers worthy and weigh them against the values we consider worthy, then see which list rewards and which list punishes.

Today's post is about six universal norms we often believe we should adhere to, despite a misalignment with our authentic selves and despite not serving our well-being, but we’ve been misled.

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