Keep Calm and Be (all versions of) Yourself.
Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.
Bruce Lee
I have tortured myself a lot of times to understand “Who am I really?”. Bruce Lee advises to be yourself. But in order to do that you need to frame your personality in order to understand what the authentic version of yourself is.
To make things even more interesting, the majority of modern humans possess multiple personalities which they utilize in accordance to the contextual circumstances. What does that really mean though?
Allow me to frame my own personality:
- I perceive myself, as a very introvert person with moments of total solitude and isolation
- My friends perceive me as a very loud and extrovert person but I am perceived as very shy from strangers or people who I am meeting for the first time.
- I am perceived as very competitive as determined in my occupation/studies and I would only talk when my opinion is required.
- I am very kind and generous with my family and relatives and I will always step out of my way in order to help them.
I was struggling to understand who of all those self- and externally-perceived personalities I can really identify as myself. If I cannot do that properly how can I rely on myself being able to be authentic and staying true to myself?
The imposter syndrome
Once my father advised me to never work together with my significant other or a friend of mine because it would ruin our relationship.
This made very little sense to me. They are people I like to spend time with, thus, why not to combine fun and work?
I could not perceive this until my university years when I chose to participate in the same study group with my closest friends.
It was a disaster. The ambition level was completely different and the cooperation was based on the fact that we are friends and not that we are all striving towards an outcome of high quality. The end result was a very mediocre assignment and loads of grudges from both sides.
My friends told me that I was a different person when I was working on assignments. They did not like that person. I was not likeable by them. I was spending time with them but I was trying to achieve something else which was exceeding the framework of our existing relationship. But it was still me.
At some other point in life and after many years together, my significant other told me that she loves it when we spend time together or when we spend time with my/her friends but she will never work with me in the same occupation due to my “work-personality”. I was a try-hard and very focused on the task in hand which was completely incompatible with her perception about me. A strange trait, definitely not desirable which would only seem to complicate our relationship. However, it was still me.
I was struggling for years to understand if I am original with my own self, my work or with my friends/significant other.
Am I an imposter of my own self? Am I faking all the time or am I authentic all the time?
After years I have concluded that this is the MOST authentic ME I could identify in my own self. It is feeling very natural to be each and every person I described above in the different contexts I framed. It was ME all along but in various contexts.
Each and every person operates in various different life pillars. Those dimensions can be different from person to person but there are some constants for most humans on this earth: family, friends, work and significant other. Quite easily a person can add additional complimentary pillars such as: roommates, church, neighbors, competitors etc. This polyphony of pillars can only highlight the complexity of each person’s lives.
It only makes sense that a person is required to utilize different traits to have all the above stated stakeholders happy or at least not angry. And from a game theory perspective it makes sense to use different dominant strategies when you alter the competing/cooperating counterparts in the game you are playing.
You cannot win in Monopoly if you are applying backgammon rules and strategies.
You can imagine yourself as being the person on this picture. Your personality(-ies) is constituted by various colors creating a colorful canvas of different traits and personalities.
We are, indeed, multi-personality personalities even when we are not trying.
The one-personality person
In one of Jordan P. Peterson’s lectures he is describing the differences between living an exceptional life in only one life pillar such as work and trying to balance out all your life pillars at the same time without being able to perform amazingly well in all of them. He is framing this as being able to be 80% successful in at least 2 or 3 of them vs being 150% successful in only one.
The deeper meaning of this lecture was to motivate a person to understand that they will live a more complete and meaningful life if they manage to be active players in as many pillars as possible. Being a multi-pillar winner is very complicated though since deliberate efforts in more than one pillars are required.
However this triggers a further idea in my head: the one-personality person exists and is the one who channels all their energy in this one thing that they are obsessed with. They are so invested in this over-represented mission in their life that they are not bothering their own selves with the development of anything further from their one-pillar personality. It is a waste of time and effort to try to win in any other dimension. They only care to be this one person who is the workaholic professional or anything else they intend to be.
Such single-personality persons exist and we all know at least one person in our lives who is willing to sacrifice everything to achieve their deeper mission in life. However, I am not so sure how many of us are willing to take that path.
It is actually quite simpler to be that person since you only need to focus on one life aspect and to completely ignore all the others, right?
Well, this is a long-shot to admit wholeheartedly. We are all born in a very complex world with intricate human relationships, thus, trying to surgically isolate only one aspect of our lives can only hold a person back in their personal development and full potential.
At the end of the day, I am quite pleased to be the isolated guy, who is really loud when surrounded by friends, very competitive in a working environment and kind and generous with family and his significant other.
I am happy not to be a one-personality person.
And I am goddamn authentic and true to myself.
Thanks for the brain food Maarten van Doorn.
