“Starseed” is a fairly new age term, but what it refers to is as old as time. Starseeds are people who either identify as very old souls, or very new souls. Either way, they are inexplicably different than other people, and their purpose on Earth is to use those differences to help humanity heal and create a new world.

If that seems like a tall order for just one person, you’re right – it is. But there are many of these individuals alive today, and they are all working together even if they don’t realize. Starseeds are characterized as being distinctly different than others. The name “starseed” actually comes from the idea that these individuals actually belong to other dimensions or planets, and sent here for specific purposes.

Starseeds are also known for their keen intuitive abilities, interest in spirituality, and unending desire to help people heal and return to wholeness. As kids, they probably struggled to fit in, and they naturally perceive the world in a new and different way. This inability to conform actually gives them their greatest advantage: to see the world differently, and to be motivated to change it.

Here’s how you will know if you are a starseed:

1. You can’t explain why, but you just know that you aren’t from this world. You have sensed since you were young that you were simply different from other people, and you know that you are not meant to try to fit in with them.

2. You have had what can be called a difficult, if not at least challenging, life. Starseeds always struggle most in adolescence, when conformity is not only rewarded most, but somewhat necessary to function.

3. You are deeply intrigued by spirituality, and believe strongly that as everything is inherently energy, so too are our bodies and beings.

4. You have experienced rapid self-growth in the course of your lifetime. Whether you feel you are a young or old soul matters not, you still have so much wisdom and knowledge to share, even if you can’t explain where you got it from.

5. You are naturally creative and artistic.

6. You are a highly sensitive person. You respond more strongly to your emotions than other people seem to.

7. You feel motivated most deeply by the idea that you are here to help other people in some way or form.

8. You empathize to a fault. You are devastated over how much darkness exists in the world, and if you could, you would make it your personal mission to save every person, animal or part of nature that’s in trouble.

9. You are deeply compelled to live a whole and authentic life. You have no interest in following other people’s standards, traditions, or ideas about how things “should” be.

10. You know intuitively that you have gifts of healing or psychic abilities, to the point that you can clearly know, see or feel things that other people can’t or wouldn’t.

11. You feel very connected to nature, but are mostly intrigued by the Universe as a whole. You want to know what else exists out there, and find it hard to believe that we are, in fact, completely alone.

12. You have always felt somewhat like an outsider, as though this planet is not your true home, but a place that you were tasked to visit for a while.

13. The fact that you didn’t fit in or feel at place anywhere caused a lot of strife growing up, when you wanted nothing more than to fit in and feel at peace. However, you now understand that this was an integral part of the process of your mental and emotional growth.

14. You feel compelled to do what you know to be right and just, at all times.

15. You have a very unique sense of style. If it’s not eccentric, you at least feel very drawn to having hairstyles or pieces of clothing that are specifically and distinctly “you.”

16. Despite how open-hearted and minded you are, you aren’t quite a free spirit. You need some kind of structure and certainty to function well in life.

17. You have had unexplainable spiritual or etheric experiences in your life, in which you witnessed things from other dimensions that most people are completely closed to.

18. You have a quarter or half “veil.” Your veil refers to the way your memory is totally wiped before you incarnate. It’s why people don’t remember where they came from or where they are going. However, you do retain some of your memory, and can even visualize what your real home looks like, if not at least what your other lives were.

19. You have had many issues with friends growing up, but when you’ve found a few close ones with whom you truly clicked, they became like family to you.

20. You know that you are destined to find your soulmate or twin flame, if you haven’t already.

21. When you start writing, painting, dancing, or doing anything else expressive, you feel almost as though a force beyond yourself takes over and creates through you. This is called channeling, and you do it often.

22. You are existential by nature. You can’t so much as look out the car window without wondering why we’re really here and what it all really means.

23. You embrace being misunderstood. At a certain point in your life, you began to realize that your differences were really your strengths, and that it would belittle you to try to be like other people, or at least appeal to their preferences in any way.

24. You are highly skeptical of major institutions on Earth. This includes, but is not limited to, government, education and religion.

25. You know deep down that you are not originally part of this world… and you’re here to help create a new one.