“If all your friends were jumping off a bridge, would you?”
~Mom

Mom wanted to protect us from peer pressure; to teach us to think for ourselves. Thinking for yourself depends upon a pretty solid sense of self-esteem, your values and your boundaries. You have to know who you are but more than that; you have to know that you will be who you are, no matter what the cost.

We survived elementary, High School and perhaps college or university, and felt we were home free. We were wrong. Peer pressure exists everywhere! It exists in the workplace. It exists in the night scene. It exists in the Blogosphere. Are you immune to its allure?

There will always, everywhere be people who will do things differently than you would do them. There are as many ways to do things as people who think of them. Peer pressure enters the picture when you feel as if you have to conform to an ideal, or adopt a strategy for success which violates in any way what you believe and how you feel.

Peer pressure can sneak up on you – it did me. Since “Life, for instance” started garnering more comments and even a respectable number of Tweets I’ve felt the pressure to write posts and headlines that would stimulate Tweets and clicks. Let me explain: yes I want many Tweets and clicks – it helps the community grow – but there’s a subtle difference between writing for the community and writing for Klout. I was losing sight of my original goal. I had jumped off the bridge and only realized as I saw the water rising to meet me.

What did I do? I climbed back up onto that bridge, shook off the water and went back to my original intention for LFI: create a feel-good, safe place where people can gather with like-minded people to talk about life.

Are you aware of any peer pressure in your life today? Have you dealt with peer pressure in the past? Are you following the crowd or leading it?

photo credit: Cristian N. Mormoloc