# How can I not be myself?

- Link: https://www.andreidraganescu.info/2018/08/22/how-can-i-not-be-myself/
- Published: 2018-08-22T07:58:09+03:00
- Author: Andrei Draganescu

#### … an answer of mine to this Quora question

If it were possible the way to not be yourself is to be born again, but if you are
born in the same family and same historical period and same social class and so 
on you could end up being the same person all over again. So get reborn as someone
else, there that should solve it.

Otherwise, it is very hard to not be yourself. Even striving as hard as you can 
to not be yourself, whatever comes out it’s still a matter of your own conditioning,
education, mental synapses formed in years and years of memory and personality development
since childhood.

Powerful drugs sometimes disconnect the self. But, as it turns out with alcohol,
people on drugs are merely themselves “uncensored”, not someone else.

Become an actor! Develop an artistic skill! A plethora of people report that being
involved in such activities helped them transcend the self and actually feel or 
become someone else.

I believe the best way to not be yourself is to keep living. Biologically you’ll
have totally new material in some years which while keeping the DNA will not keep
many scars (internal or external) which are part of the self. Psychologically you
will have new ways of internalizing the world, fresh thoughts, new relationships,
deeper understanding which, while not canceling or deleting your self, will envelop
the self in so many layers you’ll need therapy to dig it out.

Simply put, we are creatures shaped by experience and experience is tightly knit
with time. Give yourself the luxury to enjoy time and be open to whatever it throws
at you. In time you will become this or that and whatever you end up with is your
new self and hence you’ll stop being yourself by being a different (maybe better)
version of yourself.