Poll: Be yourself: bad advice?
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The issue with not being yourself is, more often than not, you seem fake to everyone around you. Likely because you are being fake. Telling someone to "be themselves" doesn't mean they go around everywhere talking about only the things they like and dismissing everything else. It means they don't pretend to be something their not.
For example, if you like anime, you shouldn't pretend you hate it just to get somewhere. That said, there are points where you might not want to bring up that you do like anime; that doesn't mean you're not being yourself, it means you're being tactful. You can be yourself and keep things to yourself at the same time. Another example would be if you have a foot fetish. You don't bring that up on a first date; again, it's being tactful, not not being yourself (woo double negatives!). Similarly, I don't walk in to bar and yell out that I love video games. If it comes up in conversation, I'll mention it, but it's not something you just go and bring up with everyone you come across.
There are definitely issues to not being yourself; you end up with people you don't like, you seem fake, you often get depressed and so on. But yelling out to the world that you are in love with an anime character probably isn't a good idea. Yet another example, I had a friend in high school who was a huge nerd, and advertised it. The people he hung out with liked him for it; didn't matter that he was overweight, not the best looking, or whatever, he was who he was and he was a good kid. However, not a month after he went off to college he started acting cocky; he'd call random girls "sexy" out of nowhere, he started talking like the stereotypical preppy kid, and so on. I hung out with him and his 'new friends' at one point, and when he was off doing something else his 'new friends' said that I was a lot cooler than they thought I'd be; they figured I'd be acting like my buddy was, being fake and whatnot. His old friends had started seeing him as weird and not at all 'him' as well. In the end, being someone he wasn't lost him old friends and didn't really gain him any new ones.
I learned very early on to be myself, and it's worked for me. I'm a huge nerd, an Eagle Scout, was in the Marching Band for six years (four of high school, two of college), played video games, watched anime, and so on. The first couple years of middle school I hated, but that was because I was hanging out with people I didn't like who didn't enjoy the same things I did and who I couldn't talk to about any of that sort of thing. Once I started hanging out with people I had things in common with I started enjoying things a lot more. The odd thing was that I kept hanging out with the other people, and started talking more about nerdy stuff with them, making random references and whatnot, and most of them didn't care in the slightest. A couple of them made fun of me for a bit, but that stopped when the others started leaving them out of stuff and whatnot because they were being dicks.
By the end of school I had friends who played football, a ton of friends in the band, friends in the stoner crowd (a surprising amount of them actually...), I hung out with a few cheerleaders on a regular basis, had my own group of friends who I went shooting with, and so on. They all knew who I was and appreciated me for being me, but I had to appreciate them for who they were too, which is where a lot of people seem to go wrong on this advice. I had to know when to go super-nerd and when to hold back a bit. There were friends I could do that with, and friends who would give me looks of confusion and then just go back to whatever else it was we were doing. I was always myself, but I had to appreciate my friends' interests when I spent time with them as much as they had to appreciate mine when they spent time with me. If I was hanging out with the jocks I avoided the Star Wars talks except in passing references (which some of them understood), and tended to play football or go to the gym more often than with my other friends. It's all a part of being yourself, but it's not all about you.
TL;DR:
Being yourself is always good advice, but you have to understand that some people won't appreciate you for doing so. Hang out with people that do. At the same time, you have to appreciate others for being themselves; don't force your thoughts on someone who appreciates who you are but doesn't like all the same things you do. Stick to the stuff you have in common, and build your friendship off of that.
For example, if you like anime, you shouldn't pretend you hate it just to get somewhere. That said, there are points where you might not want to bring up that you do like anime; that doesn't mean you're not being yourself, it means you're being tactful. You can be yourself and keep things to yourself at the same time. Another example would be if you have a foot fetish. You don't bring that up on a first date; again, it's being tactful, not not being yourself (woo double negatives!). Similarly, I don't walk in to bar and yell out that I love video games. If it comes up in conversation, I'll mention it, but it's not something you just go and bring up with everyone you come across.
There are definitely issues to not being yourself; you end up with people you don't like, you seem fake, you often get depressed and so on. But yelling out to the world that you are in love with an anime character probably isn't a good idea. Yet another example, I had a friend in high school who was a huge nerd, and advertised it. The people he hung out with liked him for it; didn't matter that he was overweight, not the best looking, or whatever, he was who he was and he was a good kid. However, not a month after he went off to college he started acting cocky; he'd call random girls "sexy" out of nowhere, he started talking like the stereotypical preppy kid, and so on. I hung out with him and his 'new friends' at one point, and when he was off doing something else his 'new friends' said that I was a lot cooler than they thought I'd be; they figured I'd be acting like my buddy was, being fake and whatnot. His old friends had started seeing him as weird and not at all 'him' as well. In the end, being someone he wasn't lost him old friends and didn't really gain him any new ones.
I learned very early on to be myself, and it's worked for me. I'm a huge nerd, an Eagle Scout, was in the Marching Band for six years (four of high school, two of college), played video games, watched anime, and so on. The first couple years of middle school I hated, but that was because I was hanging out with people I didn't like who didn't enjoy the same things I did and who I couldn't talk to about any of that sort of thing. Once I started hanging out with people I had things in common with I started enjoying things a lot more. The odd thing was that I kept hanging out with the other people, and started talking more about nerdy stuff with them, making random references and whatnot, and most of them didn't care in the slightest. A couple of them made fun of me for a bit, but that stopped when the others started leaving them out of stuff and whatnot because they were being dicks.
By the end of school I had friends who played football, a ton of friends in the band, friends in the stoner crowd (a surprising amount of them actually...), I hung out with a few cheerleaders on a regular basis, had my own group of friends who I went shooting with, and so on. They all knew who I was and appreciated me for being me, but I had to appreciate them for who they were too, which is where a lot of people seem to go wrong on this advice. I had to know when to go super-nerd and when to hold back a bit. There were friends I could do that with, and friends who would give me looks of confusion and then just go back to whatever else it was we were doing. I was always myself, but I had to appreciate my friends' interests when I spent time with them as much as they had to appreciate mine when they spent time with me. If I was hanging out with the jocks I avoided the Star Wars talks except in passing references (which some of them understood), and tended to play football or go to the gym more often than with my other friends. It's all a part of being yourself, but it's not all about you.
TL;DR:
Being yourself is always good advice, but you have to understand that some people won't appreciate you for doing so. Hang out with people that do. At the same time, you have to appreciate others for being themselves; don't force your thoughts on someone who appreciates who you are but doesn't like all the same things you do. Stick to the stuff you have in common, and build your friendship off of that.
"Beeing yourself" doens't nececerily mean pushing your personality in the faces of people you know will dislike it, nor blindly expect everyone to accept you for who you are.
It simply means not beending over backwards to please people who want you to be different, or won't accept you the way you are, but just recognising that they probably not gonna be your new best friends, and stop trying to please them.
Beeing yourself is beeing independent enough to not need the acceptence of people who dislikes you for who you are, not beeing stubborn enough to think that they'll come to like you if you just keep flaunting your personality, which they don't like, in their faces, and not beeing so socially depentant that you'll change yourself to your own dislike, for the sake of others aproval.
It simply means not beending over backwards to please people who want you to be different, or won't accept you the way you are, but just recognising that they probably not gonna be your new best friends, and stop trying to please them.
Beeing yourself is beeing independent enough to not need the acceptence of people who dislikes you for who you are, not beeing stubborn enough to think that they'll come to like you if you just keep flaunting your personality, which they don't like, in their faces, and not beeing so socially depentant that you'll change yourself to your own dislike, for the sake of others aproval.
Yes being yourself might not get everyone to love you, but being someone you're not is even worse, because then people would like you for something you arent and if they do find out who you really are, then they might cut you loose.
Personally i am proud of being myself. I don't try and be something i'm not mainly cause i'm terrible at it. xD
Being myself got me a lot more than being someone else would've.
Conclusion: Being yourself is great advice. Unless yourself is a sex offender or some kind of purple shirted eye stabber....
Personally i am proud of being myself. I don't try and be something i'm not mainly cause i'm terrible at it. xD
Being myself got me a lot more than being someone else would've.
Conclusion: Being yourself is great advice. Unless yourself is a sex offender or some kind of purple shirted eye stabber....
I'm going to say there are situations where full-blown honesty is not the best answer.
Take religion, for instance. I am not religious at all. I mean, I'm very much a spiritual person, I know how to handle internal crises and I'm a godsend for some of my friends because of that. But I don't like using a book to do so. I'm not going to quote the Bible, because that's just not me. But just because I don't believe in God as defined thus far by society, doesn't mean I will be at odds with religious people. I respect priests, I respect people going to church on Sunday morning, I respect my friends who go to mosque - I don't have that similarity, yet we get along just fine. Those people choose those times to settle themselves spiritually, and it should be criminal to interrupt another being when they are settling themselves spiritually, and for a reason such as, "I don't personally believe in that", it's still messing with others.
And really, "being yourself" means not letting people get to you. You're not going to believe in God because people tell you to believe in him. You're not going to play football just because people tell you to. You're going to do what makes you happy; but at the same time, you don't have to be dissing the religious people or the football players just because that's not your thing. They have their own thing and you have to respect that, but they will respect whatever you decide to do. Just don't go blaring off about your own choice.
And if the community doesn't support it even if you are respectful about it... well, that's one fucked up community. There aren't many things people will prioritize over respect. I've been considered one very weird person, even in my school, but people loved me because I respected the whole lot of them, and I didn't stir up shit. When a person does that, it shouldn't matter what they believe in, except if their acting on those beliefs fucks up the community.
In short, "be yourself" is great advice, but they should follow that up with the crucial point, "keep your ego in check".
Take religion, for instance. I am not religious at all. I mean, I'm very much a spiritual person, I know how to handle internal crises and I'm a godsend for some of my friends because of that. But I don't like using a book to do so. I'm not going to quote the Bible, because that's just not me. But just because I don't believe in God as defined thus far by society, doesn't mean I will be at odds with religious people. I respect priests, I respect people going to church on Sunday morning, I respect my friends who go to mosque - I don't have that similarity, yet we get along just fine. Those people choose those times to settle themselves spiritually, and it should be criminal to interrupt another being when they are settling themselves spiritually, and for a reason such as, "I don't personally believe in that", it's still messing with others.
And really, "being yourself" means not letting people get to you. You're not going to believe in God because people tell you to believe in him. You're not going to play football just because people tell you to. You're going to do what makes you happy; but at the same time, you don't have to be dissing the religious people or the football players just because that's not your thing. They have their own thing and you have to respect that, but they will respect whatever you decide to do. Just don't go blaring off about your own choice.
And if the community doesn't support it even if you are respectful about it... well, that's one fucked up community. There aren't many things people will prioritize over respect. I've been considered one very weird person, even in my school, but people loved me because I respected the whole lot of them, and I didn't stir up shit. When a person does that, it shouldn't matter what they believe in, except if their acting on those beliefs fucks up the community.
In short, "be yourself" is great advice, but they should follow that up with the crucial point, "keep your ego in check".
You have to get the balance right. Being comfortable with yourself is one thing, but being individualistic to the point where you can't integrate properly with others around you is just stupid. We are social animals.