When people say be yourself or be authentic. I often get confused. I have not developed emotionally a lot since I was a child partly due to the fact that my parents got divorced at an early age and both didn’t have time to groom me socially/emotionally. Everything I am now is due to learning from Internet personalities and emulating them or my friends who I grew up with. What do people mean when they say to be myself. Is part of being myself assessing social situations and finding out what best things I can say or do according to the ques of the envoirment, but wouldn’t that be fake of me if I simply wanted to say something other than that. Hopefully this hypothetical situation can help in understanding. Imagine I meet a girl and I talk to her, and on top of that I like this girl and would like a relationship with her. If while talking to her should I be analysing what she is saying and her mood to determine what my next response should be, basically what I’m saying is do you guys think during social interactions, do you cater your response to your environment and your goal in mind with the conversation( in this case, liking the girl so being open or wanting a relationship with her). Does your goal dictate your behaviour and words. And if so, is that authentic? What if I want to blurt out a stupid joke because I find it funny but I assess that it would not make the other person feel good in that situation. Do I refrain or do I still say it? What I need is a re definition of being yourself and being authentic. If the assessing part is true then that effects my personality a lot and there is a massive change from more childish like to serious, I’ll still joke around but that diminishes alot. I think maybe like all things their are mistakes you make in social interactions and emotional ones and you learn from them for the next time you are in them again but while also keeping yourself in the element, not saying anything that isn’t you but also not saying the first thing that comes to your mind. Maybe it could be that I didn’t use to speak up a lot in my younger days due to low confidence and now that I’m more confident I blurt out words without thinking because I don’t want to feel that same way again but also this has harmed me in my 20’s as people usually go through this trial and error stage during their teens while I’m going through it right now. What Im getting at is that does every good socialiser think before they speak according to their situation and cues from other people while also not being fake. Is that what growing up is to kill the childish antics you have in you as you grow and start to think about how like everything socialising is also done in a certain way but with your twist to it. Is that really it? Thank you for coming to my ted talk. In all seriousness please help
2 comments
You can say whatever comes to your mind, that is being authentic.
You can say whatever you think will be appropriate, and that too will be authentic.
I go through what you are going through on a daily basis. There are unsaid rules when it comes to socialising, and if you break them, you might come across as someone people wouldn’t want to hangout with, and you learn that with time when you socialise more.
The rule I follow is to not say something that can possibly hurt the other person. There are lot more nuances, but that differs from person to person.
Being yourself means you don’t say things to impress people, you say things because you believe or enjoy those things. You can’t completely be yourself because you can’t be completely unfiltered because it will upset everyone around you. You need to strike a balance between making others happy and making yourself happy. And you can do self-improvement to be a better version of your authentic self people will often like more.
Here are some reasons you don’t just want to say what others want to hear.
1. You have to lie a lot to say what others want to hear. People can sense fakeness and they hate it. If they catch you lying once that really ruins things.
2. Social interaction is so quick its very hard to evaluate social interactions in real time and come up with the perfect things to say. Its all about being in flow state and letting the words come to you, authenticity, with some filtering of course.
3. Its exhausting to keep up the act and your act will fall apart and be exposed.
4. Don’t you want to attract people who like the real you? If you put up an act you will only attract people who like this fake version of you.
5. Putting up this act is needy approval seeking behavior and anxious attachment. You need secured attachment which is a compromise between neediness and avoidant attachment which is rejecting others. Its about feeling secure that those you chose to be close with like the real you and you don’t have to impress them all the time.