Be yourself but not too much
I’ve recently been doing some job searching and have had to attend one of life’s greatest joys that being the job interview. I was advised that the best thing to do is to always “be yourself” to which I said sure but then I got some feedback from my references some of which was surprisingly negative. I was told that I am impatient, it takes a while for me to open up to people and I don’t appear excited. It was a little disheartening to know that being ourselves will not always be to our advantage. Then how do we reconcile our true selves and what the expectation of society when we fail to meet those expectations?
When I got this feedback I couldn’t help but be upset, we all have these notions that we are good folks and other people love us especially those who we consider our peers. The next thing we try to do is rationalize and see how we can “fix” these problems that we apparently have in us. So much for being ourselves! But what we miss in this exercise is being able to critically look at these criticisms and see if they are justified or not. This will go against the idea of constant self-improvement but it stresses the idea of questioning everything about you including the opinion that others have about you.
How do we reconcile this tension where on one hand we look for authenticity but on the other hand our authenticity does not please others and in turn ourselves? Ladies and gentleman fellow toast masters and distinguished guests let me help you be yourself and empowering you to self-improve rather than just forcing you to do so. This is the only way you can improve naturally and have those improvements truly become a permanent part of yourself and not fleet away.
I will take a look at three distinct thinkers I came across while wrestling with this concept who each shared their unique perspective. Let’s start off with Eleanor Roosevelt who made the following statement “when you adopt the standards and the values of someone else … you surrender your own integrity [and] become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.” What this means is that these negative criticisms about me were made from the perspective of someone one, for example the person who said I was impatient was in fact one of the most impatient people I came across and whose insensitive behaviour towards me was common place and therefore gave me license to act in the same way. In that sense I saw that as part of the normal state of affairs in our workplace, the behaviour didn’t bother me but I also expected the standards for behaviour that applied to me to be applied to other people. If I took their criticism into heart, went into a time machine and modified my behaviour would I not be a complete subservient hypocrite? I would be an accomplice to a system where one set of behaviour would be acceptable and expected for some and not others, does this not in fact create oppression!? Is that what an ethical person should support and is that a system that is humane? I don’t think it is. Then what I can take from this is that any challenge to my behaviour is a challenge to my humanity and therefore it is my ethical duty to deflect these challenges no matter what. But then again what if these criticisms are right or if I perceive them as right then what is it that I should do to reconcile these challenges with my struggle to maintain my authenticity? As with everything we should look at other opinions that nuance the argument even if they seem to go contradict it.
One of the most if not the most well-known Russian authors Dostoyevsky came up with the following when looking at the paradox of people pleasing “The more incompetent one feels, the more eager he is to fight.” If I can unpack that small line I see it as the following, it is good to be criticized and in fact the criticism we receive is what will make us better. The idea is that being “eager” means that not only do you want to fight which in this case it to improve yourself it is the idea that you are actually looking forward to the fight itself, meaning that you are not only looking to the end result that is the reverse of your incompetence but it is the eagerness to go on the journey to achieve these results. Even the idea of life being a fight is very interesting because it does account for the notion that we are all shaped by external forces that we are sometimes at odds with. We have to win these fights in a way that will prove to those accusing us of incompetence that we are not incompetent by either disproving the accusation or disproving our incompetence to the accuser by improving ourselves. What I like about Dostoyevsky’s approach is that unlike Roosevelt’s dismissal of all claims that contradict us there is a flexibility here to wrestle with these contradictions and allow us to reflect and see their levels or validity while also keeping the adversarial approach to motivate us into wanting to prove them wrong. Meaning that if you can prove to me that I am a dummy and I accept that proof, I will accept your absolute authority of opinion over me and will work myself to the bone in order to make you eat your words and show how wrong you would be if you don’t change your mind. I won’t be doing this because I take your view as correct by default but only after I’ve wrestled with what you’ve said and convinced myself that you are right.
Bruce Lee also weighed in on this subject, In a letter that he penned to himself he wrote the following “Where some people have a self, most people have a void, because they are too busy in wasting their vital creative energy to project themselves as this or that, dedicating their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like rather than actualizing their potentiality as a human being, a sort of “being” vs. having — that is, we do not “have” mind, we are simply mind. We are what we are.” I see this as taking down the entire self-improvement process, meaning whether we accept criticism or not the idea of acting on these criticism is not only a waste of time it is in fact a damaging affect to ourselves, not only are we not making ourselves better we are making ourselves worse. What this comes down to is that this is taking us away from being ourselves. In the case of Roosevelt she objects to change out of principle while Dostoyevsky champions change as the principle, Mr. Lee simply sees this change as irrelevant because it never changes you only brings about the appearance of you being changed to others. Meaning that it doesn’t matter how you feel about it the idea of pursuing a change in yourself is a futile exercise no different than convincing yourself to like a certain kind of food when deep down inside no matter how many servings of this food you will how you will never ever like it.
But where does this leave us? Is the opinions of other worthless? Is there any point in self-reflection knowing that we are what we are? There is definitely a way out of this and can also be found with another aspect of Lee’s writing that I will lift from 3 different passages. First let’s look at criticisms from the following prism “when it comes to observing faults in others, most of us are quick to react with condemnation. But what about looking inwardly for a change? To personally examine who we really are and what we are, our merits as well as our faults” the same rationale for excusing our criticism by others cannot be applied our criticism by ourselves. Once we act on these it is more important to have the change be a truthful change to ourselves, here is when we can rely on others to test not the nature of the change in us but its authenticity “I am happy because I am daily growing and honestly not knowing where the limit will yet lie. To be certain, every day can be a revelation or a new discovery. However, the most satisfaction is yet to come to hear another human being say, “Hey, here is something real.” And the key to the success of these changes is summarized beautifully in the following “To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are… Yet it is remarkable that the very people who are most self-dissatisfied and crave most for a new identity have the least self-awareness. They have turned away from an unwanted self and hence never had a good look at it.” What this shows us is that change cannot be realized until you have really known what you are, this means you can realize the good or the bad within you and everything in between, then it is your choice to change these aspects about you or not but you have to do it because you truly feel comfortable with yourself and where you want to be. Then you are ready for a journey of transformation that you can only do by yourself, the only time you will need others if to judge whether you really have become a new self, in this case you will not be a “changed” person but the change will be what you are.
There is a lot here to absorb but through examining the idea of criticism, authenticity and improvement we can reach the following three pillars:
- Opinions of yourself expressed by others should be reflected upon but only if you want to and these opinions not absolutes
- The idea of change is not an easy task and will require a long road to travel on and an enthusiasm to go on that long road
- You should know what you are before you know what you want to be and then you should focus being that person, meaning truly changing and be willing to let go of your former self.
So next time you come across a negative opinion about yourself do not perceive it as gospel, be ready to question it but also be prepared to work hard to disprove and only do it if you really want to. The more you know, love and accept yourself the easier it would be to mutate into something better.