I was frustrated today. Not by anything dramatic, just one of those moments where someone’s reaction felt off, and I couldn’t immediately explain why. It sat with me through the evening until a line from a Bob Dylan song drifted back into my head: “everyone wants you to be just like them.”
That’s it. That’s what I was feeling.
When you live a certain way, people around you naturally want you to live their way. Not out of cruelty, usually. It’s simpler than that. If you believe what I believe, pursue what I pursue, live how I live, it confirms I’m on the right track. Your agreement is my validation.
The Quiet Question
When you choose differently, whether in your career, your faith, how you parent, how much risk you take, or even how content you are with less, you introduce a question into the room without meaning to. That question is: what if there’s another way?
Most people don’t want to sit with that question. It’s uncomfortable. So instead of wrestling with it, they try to pull you back toward sameness. It’s not always conscious. It doesn’t always look hostile. But the pressure is real.
Difference creates comparison. And comparison creates discomfort.
If you are more disciplined, more ambitious, more unconventional, or just more at peace with a quieter life, your existence can quietly highlight places where others feel uncertain. The easier move is to close that gap, not by elevating themselves, but by nudging you back into familiar territory. If we’re the same, there’s nothing to compare.
The Projection You Didn’t Ask For
Here’s what I’ve come to think: when someone pressures you to be more like them, they are usually working something out in themselves.
The person who criticizes your discipline may wish they had more of it. The person who mocks your ambition may secretly want to pursue something bold. The person who steers you away from risk may be running from their own regret. It is easier to manage other people than to confront yourself. That’s a hard truth, but once you see it, it changes how you receive the pressure.
It isn’t really about you.
“It’s easier to control others than confront yourself.”
What Secure People Do
Strong people don’t need you to mirror them. Grounded people can stand next to contrast without flinching. Confident people don’t spend time recruiting clones.
The healthiest relationships I’ve known leave room for divergence. You can share a life, a friendship, or a team with someone who is building something different from what you are. That difference doesn’t have to be a threat. It can just be a difference.
So when the pressure comes, and it will come, the move is not to defend yourself or argue your choices. The move is to recognize what’s actually happening. Someone is uncomfortable with a question your life is asking. That’s their work to do, not yours.
The one step I’m taking from this: the next time I feel that friction with someone, I’m going to pause before I react and ask whether the discomfort is really about me at all. Chances are, it isn’t. That small pause might be the difference between getting pulled back and staying on your own path.
