do your own thing

To do what one is interested in or skilled at, rather than simply doing what everyone else does. You don't have to go to med school just because your sister did—you need to do your own thing. Andrea is very independent and usually just does her own thing.

COMMON If you do your own thing, you live, act, or behave in the way you want to, without paying attention to other people's opinions. She was allowed to do her own thing as long as she kept in touch by phone to say she was okay. I made a point of doing my own thing on the pitch and ignored my coach's instructions.

To find self-expression or self-fulfillment in some activity. Although this term is very old indeed—numerous references can be found in Chaucer, as in The Merchant’s Tale (“where as they doon hir thynges”)—it became hackneyed during the 1960s. Rebelling against the establishment, the unconventional “dropped out” of society and joined communes where they would “do their own thing.” One might wonder how many of them were familiar with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, Self-Reliance (1841), in which he said, “I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. . . . But do your own thing and I shall know you.”