We live in a world that hands us scripts: be productive, be steady, keep up, fit in. March to the beat everyone else is marching to.
But what happens when that rhythm doesn’t fit? What if the cadence of your soul moves at a different pace?
I’ve spent years forcing myself into tempos that left me exhausted and ashamed, only to discover that performance culture doesn’t just burn out people like me, it corrodes all of us. And yet, there’s another way. Across traditions and in my own story, I’ve found hints of a different rhythm. One rooted in grace, authenticity, and even rest.
This week’s piece is an invitation: to lay down the borrowed drum, to listen for your own rhythm, and to discover what life sounds like on the other side of performance.
Watch or Listen
The Full Story
We're all handed scripts about who we're supposed to be. Be driven. Be steady. Be productive. Be outgoing. March to the beat of the drum everyone else is marching to.
But what happens when that rhythm doesn't fit you? When the cadence of the left, left, left, right, left, doesn't match the rhythm of your soul?
That's been my story.
Living at the Wrong Tempo
For years, I tried to live at a tempo that wasn't mine. I pushed, I forced, I tried to match the beats I was told were normal. And then I'd crash.
Hard.
I'd pick myself back up, try again, crash again. Over and over, an endless cycle of attempts and failures.
Finally I began to wonder:
What if the problem wasn't me?
What if the problem was the script?
What if staying human begins with marching to the beat of your own drummer?
Finding My True Rhythm
That question led me into all kinds of personality systems, trying to figure out who I really was underneath all the shoulds.
Myers-Briggs typed me as an ENFP. Imaginative, restless, fueled by possibility, but often scattered.
The Enneagram told me I was a Four with a Five wing. Intense, creative, always searching for meaning, but haunted by not quite fitting.
And let’s not get started on astrology and my being a Scorpio.
As I talked about these tools, people kept saying, "You've got to check out Human Design."
Understanding Human Design
Now, if you're not familiar with it, Human Design is one of those personality-type systems that pulls together ancient wisdom and modern science. It mixes astrology, the I Ching, chakras, even some quantum physics, and sorts people into a handful of different energy types.
The largest groups are Generators and Manifesting Generators. Together they make up about 70% of the population. They're the builders, the doers, the ones who keep the world turning. Which means it makes sense that most of the systems we live in (school, work, family life) are designed around them.
Then there are Manifestors, around 9% of people, who are initiators, fire-starters.
Reflectors, just 1%, mirror and absorb the energy of the communities around them.
Discovering My Projector Nature
The last 20%, these are the Projectors. And that's me, and the broader description named something I had always felt but couldn't explain: I'm not here to produce, I'm here as a guide and seer, someone who helps others embody their truest selves.
But that requires something most of the world doesn't value: pacing … being attuned to the energy of the moment … and, quite often, rest.
Projectors don't thrive by powering through ten-hour days or pushing themselves to match everyone else's pace. Our gift is in seeing, guiding, noticing patterns others miss, but that only happens when we care for our energy. It means honoring cycles of work and rest, knowing when to step in and when to step back.
The Clash with Performance Culture
And this is where Projectors often clash with broader society. In a culture built for constant output, if you pause, you look lazy. If you honor your limits, you look weak. If you follow your energy, instead of a clock, you can look unreliable.
But what looks like weakness in the eyes of performance culture is actually the doorway to authenticity. Because Projectors are not here to produce like everyone else. We're here to illuminate, to guide, to help others see more clearly.
And suddenly, so much of my life made sense.
The Universal Impact of Performance Culture
And yet this clash with performance culture isn't unique to Projectors. Every type has its own version of it. Even Generators and Manifesting Generators, who make up the majority and for whom most of society's rhythms are designed, can get caught in performance and forget their own flow.
That's the deeper truth: performance culture isn't just exhausting for those of us who don't fit the mold. It's bad for everyone.
It drains the Generators who forget to follow joy and end up grinding just to keep the machine running.
It burns out Manifestors who are built to spark something new, not to answer endless demands.
It isolates Reflectors who are meant to mirror a community, not carry the weight of one alone.
Performance culture chews us up no matter our type. It convinces us that worth is measured by output, that rest is weakness, that authenticity is indulgence. And in doing so, it robs every one of us of our humanity.
So marching to the beat of your own drummer isn't really about which type you are. It's about refusing someone else's script and honoring your own. It's about recognizing the pace, the energy, the way of being that is true for you, and daring to live from there.
The Cultural Pressure to Perform
Because until we do, the culture will keep devouring us. Capitalism will measure us by our output. Religion will weigh us down with rules and shame. Social media will demand we curate masks instead of showing our faces. Even family will hand us scripts that erase our truest selves.
Performance culture chews us up no matter who we are. It convinces us that worth is measured by production, that rest is weakness, that authenticity is indulgence. And in doing so, it robs us of our humanity.
A Different Yoke
It was into one version of performance culture, one of religious legalism that Jesus spoke a different word: "My yoke is easy, my burden is light."
In the ancient world, a yoke was placed on oxen so they could pull a plow. It was also a metaphor for the rules, regulations, and expectations a rabbi or a religion would place on people for how they were supposed to live. Most yokes were heavy, demanding, impossible to carry without breaking.
But Jesus offers an alternative. His yoke is not one more crushing set of demands. It is grace. And from that grace grows an authentic life, one where we are freed to be ourselves, and in that freedom we find the capacity to love others.
Modern-Day Yokes
And while Jesus responded to the religious demands of his day, are those really any different than the production demands of ours? Or keeping up appearances on social media? Or a family that requires conformity for acceptance? Aren't those all just different ways of telling a square peg to fit in a round hole?
Wisdom Across Traditions
But it wasn't just Jesus who invited the grace that can grow an authentic life. From this same place the Sufi poet Rumi once wrote, "Try to accept the changing seasons of your soul, even if you've never met them before." Authenticity is not about locking ourselves into one rigid identity, but about receiving our own becoming with gentleness.
And the poet Audre Lorde, speaking out of the Black feminist tradition, declared, "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." In other words, living from authenticity is not just personal freedom, it is resistance against every system that tells us to be someone else.
And maybe that is what Jesus was getting at all along.
An Invitation to Unburdened Living
What if "my yoke is easy, my burden is light" wasn't only religious poetry, but a living invitation? Not to pick up one more system, one more set of rules, one more performance script, but to set them down. To live unburdened. To live as yourself.
Learning to Ride the Wave
I caught a glimpse of what that looks like the day I tried surfing back in 2018. The instructor kept saying, "Don't fight the board. Don't fight the wave. Let it carry you." Every time I forced it, I went under. Every time I surrendered, I started to ride.
That's the difference between performance and authenticity. Performance is fighting the wave, trying to muscle your way into a rhythm that will only throw you off. Authenticity is trusting the wave, letting your own energy, your own timing, your own way of being, rise and carry you.
It took me a long time to learn that lesson.
From Doing to Being
In addition to digging into all kinds of personality assessments, there was a season where I joined a men's group that was all about tactics and strategy. Lists of what to do, how to win, how to dominate. Their whole structure, whether it was about being a husband, a father, or a worker, started with doing. After a couple years of the committing, grinding, collapsing, and recommitting cycle, I left that group because something in me longed for being. Not more lists of things to do, but a deeper connection to who I was becoming.
That search led me to Bill Plotkin and SoulCraft, to a nature-based map of the human psyche and the journey of soul initiation. It was a different path, one that asked me not to grind harder, but to listen deeper. Not to prove myself through performance, but to discover myself through presence.
The True Cost of Inauthenticity
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once wrote, "The most common form of despair is not being who you are."
That line lands with me, because that was the cycle I kept finding myself in. Trying, forcing, performing, crashing. Over and over. And it wasn't just exhaustion. It was despair.
And that's what's at stake if we never step out of performance culture. It's not just that we'll be tired or frustrated. It's that we'll slowly wither inside. Our bodies burn out. Our relationships grow thin. Our joy evaporates. We reach for distractions, addictions, and shallow fixes to numb the ache.
And when enough of us live this way, the despair becomes collective. Performance culture hollows out not only individual lives but entire communities. It leaves us running on empty while pretending everything is fine. It makes us strangers to ourselves, and then strangers to one another.
The cost of not living authentically is nothing less than despair.
But naming that cost is only part of the story. Because we also need to name the danger that comes with being authentic.
The Uneven Risk of Authenticity
For some, authenticity is relatively safe. For others, it is dangerous.
For many Black and Brown people, for queer and trans communities, for people with disabilities, being fully yourself in certain spaces can mean rejection, exclusion, even violence.
The Reality of Code-Switching
That's why code-switching exists. Code-switching is the practice of changing how you speak, act, or present yourself depending on the people around you. It is putting on one version of yourself in one environment and another version somewhere else, just to be accepted or to stay safe. It's not pretending for fun. It's survival. It's navigating a world that demands not just performance but conformity as the price of admission.
Think about a Black professional who feels the need to "tone down" their cultural expressions at work, or a queer teenager who hides parts of themselves just to avoid being targeted at school. At the root of it, this is because our society has deemed straight, white, male as the norm. As our culture is currently constructed, everyone else is expected to adjust, to code-switch, to perform safety around that standard.
So we have to be careful here. It's too easy for authenticity to become a privilege, something the safe and powerful preach to everyone else, while others risk losing jobs, relationships, or even their lives for the same choice.
Widening the Circle of Safety
And that is why the weight of change at a broader social level cannot rest on the most vulnerable. The burden is not on the one who risks danger to be themselves, it is on those of us who have safety to widen the circle.
The deeper invitation is this: those of us who can risk authenticity must do so: loudly, consistently, unapologetically. Not only for our own sake, but to create room for others. To carve out spaces where masks can be set down. To help shape a world where authenticity no longer equals danger, but dignity.
Because staying human is never just a personal project. It is a communal one.
Beginning the Journey to Authenticity
So where do we begin? How do you even start discovering who you are when most of us have spent a lifetime being conformed into something else?
For those of us who carry relative safety and privilege, the invitation is to lean in with courage. Pay attention to your body. Notice where you feel flow and where you feel force. Flow feels like ease, energy, alignment. Force feels like grinding, pushing, pretending. That's one of the clearest signals of where you are living authentically and where you are performing.
Listen for your own drumbeat. It might show up in silence, in prayer, in time outside, in the creative moments where you forget about the clock. These are clues pointing you back to yourself.
Finding Pockets of Safety
And for those living in spaces where authenticity is dangerous, the guidance is different but just as holy. It may not be safe to be fully yourself everywhere, but it is still vital to find pockets of safety where you can exhale. Trusted friendships. Communities where you don't have to switch codes just to belong. Moments of art, prayer, journaling, or ritual where you can set down the mask and remember your own face. These are acts of self-preservation, and as Audre Lorde reminded us, self-preservation in the face of oppressive systems is not indulgence, it is resistance.
The Power of Community
For everyone, ask the people you trust, the ones who love you without agenda, what they see in you when you come alive. Because the journey to authenticity is never meant to be solitary. We need others to both reflect our true selves back to us and to create sanctuaries where masks can be safely set down.
I've experienced this in gatherings where people come together not to perform but to be present. In circles where the question isn't "What do you do?" but "What brings you alive?" In friendships where I don't have to edit myself to be acceptable.
These spaces become laboratories for authenticity, where we practice being ourselves and support others doing the same. They become oases in a performance-parched landscape.
Author, educator, and activist, Parker Palmer calls these "circles of trust," communities where people can "hear each other into speech." Not spaces that demand performance, but ones that invite presence. Not groups that require conformity, but ones that celebrate particularity.
And that's the ultimate paradox: we need each other to become fully ourselves. Authenticity isn't found in isolation but in connection. Not in individualism, but in communion.
This is why, when we find moments of authenticity, when we drop the performance and live from our center, we naturally want to create space for others to do the same. The person living authentically becomes a permission-giver, widening the circle of safety for others.
Maybe this is what beloved community looks like: not perfect people, but authentic ones. Not those who have it all figured out, but those brave enough to set down the masks and invite others to do the same.
Tools for the Journey
But your community extends beyond the people you know. Other sages have produced tools and resources that can speak to us from beyond time and place. This can come from the very tools I mentioned earlier: the personality profiles, the systems, the maps. But here's the shift: they aren't dictators telling you who you must be. They're invitations. They're mirrors that help you ask, Does this fit? Does this feel like me? What part of this rings true, and how might it guide me toward greater authenticity?
Because none of those systems will capture the whole of you. But they can offer language, perspective, and small nudges that help you reclaim what performance culture has buried.
For me, they've become part of how I shape my mornings. I've built a routine that doesn't just push me into the grind, but invites me to ask: what kind of energy do I have today? What does it mean to move through this day as a Projector, honoring my flow instead of fighting it?
I've even created a custom GPT that helps me do this work. It blends Human Design with embodiment practices and the Ignatian spiritual exercises. Every morning it offers me reflections and questions that set the stage for living from authenticity, not performance.
That daily rhythm keeps me rooted. It reminds me that authenticity isn't a one-time revelation. It's a practice, a way of beginning again every day.
And you don't need a custom tool to begin. You can start with something simple. Before you step into your day, pause and ask yourself: Where do I feel flow right now? Where do I feel force? Write it down. Or spend five quiet minutes listening for your own rhythm. Even one small practice of noticing can become a mirror, helping you see where you've been performing and where you are free to be yourself.
The Radical Power of Rest
Finally, in our performance-driven world, perhaps nothing is more radical than genuine rest. Not the collapse that comes after burnout, but intentional, unapologetic restoration.
I discovered this the hard way. For years, I treated rest as a reward I could only claim after achieving enough. My calendar was packed, my notifications never stopped, and I wore my exhaustion like a badge of honor. This wasn't just personal choice; it was cultural conformity. Our economic systems treat human beings as machines that should run continuously, valuing productivity over presence.
But what if rest itself is a form of resistance? What if stepping away from constant doing is not laziness but liberation?
The Jewish tradition has known this for millennia. Sabbath, which I unpacked last week on We Can Stay Human, is not just religious practice but revolutionary protest, declaring that humans are not machines, that our worth is not measured by output. In a world obsessed with productivity, choosing rest declares that we are more than what we produce.
Tricia Hersey, founder of The Nap Ministry, frames rest as "a spiritual practice, a political practice, and a liberating practice." For the marginalized and exploited, rest becomes an act of defiance against systems designed to extract maximum labor without regard for human dignity.
This connects directly to authenticity. When we're constantly performing, constantly productive, we have no space to discover who we actually are beneath the doing. Rest creates that space. In stillness, we reconnect with our deeper rhythms. In silence, we can hear our own voice again.
Finding Your Rhythm
And remember, wherever you find yourself, discovering who you are is not about landing on a final definition, but about entering into a rhythm of listening. Returning again and again to the question: what is my true rhythm, my true beat, in this season?
Because performance is marching to someone else's drum. It is living by a beat that never belonged to you. But authenticity, staying human, is listening for your own rhythm, the one that rises from within and resonates with grace. It is daring to follow that beat even when the world insists on another.
So the invitation is simple and profound: Stop marching to the borrowed drum. Start listening for your own. And let that rhythm carry you into the life you were made to live.
It's how we can stay human.
Practices For Discovering and Embracing Authenticity
Here are three practices to help you both discover and embrace authenticity. Whether your day only allows for a 60-second reclamation reflection, your week a one-hour resistance ritual, or you find yourself ready for a full on rebellion against a world that assaults your humanity, I have something for you.
And as a bonus this week, I’m including the 60-second reflection (ok, it’s 60-ish seconds) above the paywall.
60-Second Reclamation Reflection
Take a minute (and a half) to reflect on the yoke you’re carrying and what it would be like to set it down.