You're Not the Wrong Shape. You're in the Wrong Space.
Stop trying to fit your square peg in a round hole.
Society is constantly trying to tell us “who” to be, what is the “right” way to do things. We are constantly bombarded with images of the “perfect”, “most efficient”, “best”, “ideal” way to do things. Social media is full of “life hacks” designed to help us “optimize” our days.
And how frustrating is it when you look at those people, you hear that advice, and you think “that will never work for me. I must be broken”? We’ve all been there. Comparison to some “norm”, or even just comparison to your friends and family and what works for them, can sometimes be one of the biggest things that gets in our way. And let’s be clear, the advice all of these people are giving is not bad advice. It’s not ill-intended. It’s not wrong in any way. But it doesn’t work for you. And that’s ok.
You are a square peg, trying to force yourself into a round hole. Just think, how much more comfortable would it feel if you just accepted your “square-ness”, and found yourself a “square home”. I cannot stress how freeing this can be. Finding strategies that work FOR YOU, a schedule that works FOR YOU, relationships that work FOR YOU. Not some standard that society has told us works for everyone else.
Why we keep grabbing the round hole anyway
If forcing yourself into the wrong shape feels so bad, why do so many of us keep doing it? Usually, it’s not because we haven’t noticed the discomfort. It’s because the round hole came with a perceived set of instructions, and the square one didn’t.
Round holes are everywhere: in the productivity app everyone swears by, in the morning routine your coworker won’t stop talking about, in the way your sibling seems to manage a calendar without falling apart. There’s a whole industry built around telling you exactly what you “should” look like to fit into that round hole. And on the surface, these round holes seem so easy to fit into. All those tips and tricks seem to “make sense”, so of course they should work. Nobody’s handing out a manual for building your own shape from scratch. So we keep sanding down our corners, hoping that if we just try a little harder, the round hole will eventually feel like home.
But it never does. Not because you’re doing it wrong. Not because you’re broken, or "too weird" or "too different". But because it was never built for your shape in the first place.
What actually changes when you stop
This isn’t about giving up on structure, ambition, or trying. It’s about redirecting all that effort somewhere it can actually pay off. The energy you’ve spent trying to become round is energy you could instead spend building a hole that actually works FOR YOU.
That might look like:
· A to-do list that’s three words per task instead of a color-coded system you abandon by Wednesday.
· A workday shaped around your actual energy, not a 9-to-5 you’re white-knuckling through.
· Relationships where you don’t have to pretend an ease that you don’t actually feel.
· Implementing the types of “brain breaks” that are actually a break for you
· Learning your own triggers and motivators instead of assuming you always have to “just push through”
· Engaging in whatever small daily rituals you need to feel happy and whole, regardless of what others may think of them
None of this is smaller or less ambitious than the round-hole version. It’s just built to hold your actual weight instead of someone else’s.
Some questions to explore
● Where in your life are you currently trying to be round? Be specific: a routine, a relationship, a way of working.
● Whose “round hole” have you been measuring yourself against? Where did that standard actually come from?
● What would it look like to build a “square home” in that one area, even just as an experiment?
● What have you been told is “the right way” to do something that has actually never worked for you?
● If you stopped forcing the fit today, what’s the first thing that would feel different?
Don’t change yourself to fit in the box, change the box.
