You live, but are you living the way you want to live, or the way others want you to live? You choose, but are your choices based on your own decisions or on the decisions imposed on you by society? You act, but are you acting out of your conditioning or out of your conscious will?

Almost everywhere I look, I see people who are immensely suppressed and experience tremendous suffering, mainly because they conform to those around them, just so that they can feel liked and accepted. They’re afraid that embracing and honestly expressing their individuality might lead them to social ostracism. Their life is a slow torture, and with every step they take, they feel the burden of conformity growing heavier and heavier on their shoulders. They sacrifice themselves just so they can please others, unaware that they are committing psychological suicide.

But what is the point of living this way? It’s meaningless and utterly stupid.

Life can be lived in a totally different way — a way that allows us to live up to our fullest potential, that helps us to find contentment and peace, that brings us freedom to be spontaneous and make the most out of our life’s journey. A way that turns existence into a celebration, filled with beautiful moments that make life truly worth living.

Rebellion is not what most people think. It is turning off the T.V. and thinking for yourself.

For this to happen, however, we need a big shift in our consciousness. A good first step to achieving this is to escape the herd mentality that surrounds us by rebelling against anything that is imprisoning our minds and filling our souls with toxic energy.

When you gather the courage to say a big NO to conformity and break free from the mental shackles that were imposed on you since the very day you were born, great things will start happening that may turn your life upside down. Below are some of those things.

You Develop Your Critical Thinking

When you rebel against the herd…

Once you turn your back to the crowd, your way of thinking slowly stops being influenced by it and you start using your reason more. This works wonders for increasing your intelligence.

Most people don’t think for themselves — instead, they let others do the thinking for them. They are easily persuaded by the herd mentality and never stop for a moment to question anything that they’ve been told. They are blinded by belief and follow without doubting what is considered to be a normal way of living. Desiring to be normal, they lose their individuality, and the intellectual consequences of this are enormous: they can barely use their critical thinking, and their willpower is almost nonexistent. Not surprisingly, when faced with any problems, their only hope is that someone else will help them to overcome them. By themselves, they feel totally helpless.

Nature makes everything unique, yet we strive to make everything the same.

When you step away from the confines of the herd and start your own quest for truth, you begin to hone the art of freethinking. You don’t believe anything without evidence, you don’t accept what doesn’t resonate with your own experiences, and you try to find out what’s true for yourself. In your efforts to achieve this, you mature, become wiser, and learn to make more conscious choices that contribute to your well-being.

You Drop Your Social Masks

Another thing that happens is that you become honest with yourself and others. You let go of the social masks that you had been wearing to pretend that you were someone you never were and reveal to the world who you truly are. You expose yourself, unafraid of whether others will judge you or not.

In the society we are living in, hypocrisy prevails. People constantly lie to one another just so that they can feel accepted by the mob, but at the same time, they experience emotional turbulence, because they never managed to accept themselves as they are. And when you don’t like yourself for who you are, what is the point of being liked by others for who you are not?

Have the courage to shed your mask and expose who you really are.

The moment you stop desiring others’ acceptance, you begin to express yourself. You don’t need anyone else’s permission. You don’t suppress yourself, and naturally, your stress levels drop, which makes you feel better than you’ve ever felt before. In addition, you are able to form genuine relationships with human beings who truly resonate with you and embrace you just the way you are.

You Learn to Take Responsibility into Your Own Hands

Responsibility and freedom always go hand in hand, so the more responsible one is, the more freedom one experiences.

People tend to throw responsibility away and hold others responsible for their lives. By doing so, however, they are also throwing away their freedom. Not only that, they also blame others whenever something is going wrong with their lives. That’s why you see people believe in saviors of all kinds and allow a few individuals — for example, politicians — to take control over their lives. But once they find out that those people don’t fulfill their expectations, they start blaming them for ruining their lives, not realizing that they themselves are at fault for handing over their power to them in the first place.

Now that I am no longer sleeping, I cannot pretend to fit where I no longer belong.

The herd always desires a good shepherd to take care of it. A rebel, however, doesn’t allow anyone the freedom to dictate to him how to live. On the contrary, he sees himself as the creator of his own destiny and takes full responsibility for his actions. And instead of blaming others when he happens to make mistakes, he fully accepts them and takes immediate action to correct them.

You Become the Master of Your Life

In essence, a rebel is one who is the master of his life.

A rebel doesn’t walk on a predetermined path — he creates his own path.

A rebel never lets others control their thought and behavior — he thinks for himself and his actions are the embodiment of his psyche.

A rebel lives to the fullest and squeezes the juice out of life. And although he might make many mistakes in his efforts to turn his dreams into reality, he is not filled with regrets, because, even if he ultimately fails at his attempts, he at least knows that he tried to the best of his ability.

Walk your own path.

If you conform to the herd, you might be under the impression that you are free, but in reality, you are nothing but a puppet being manipulated by outside forces. You might mistakenly feel strong with the crutches that were offered to you by weak people, but deep down you’ll know that you are powerless to stand on your own two feet. You might wear a fake smile and superficially feel secure, but you won’t be able to help continuously experiencing immense grief in your heart for the risks you never dared to take.

So what are you waiting for?

Think for yourself.

Tear off your masks.

Act responsibly.

Live your life.

Sofo Archon is the creator of The Unbounded Spirit, a personal blog through which he is sharing part of his being with millions of readers from every corner of our planet. Created in 2012 out of his thirst to reach out to the world, it has helped form a solid online community of over 300,000 like-minded individuals.

Sofo’s writings touch on a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, religion, ecology and economics, but all of them, though different in topic, share something in common: they point to a better way of living.