Just be yourself... or Don't?!

I was having a conversation with a friend about all the things that make me “me” and how it affects my life, perhaps adversely. His advice was “just be yourself”; an advice often given in such situations, but does it often work? Sometimes, you feel you have been yourself long enough but it hasn’t resulted in what you need it to. So I started thinking:

Anyone who has ever dealt with people -long enough to form a relationship, any kind of relationship like friendship, neighboring, business, etc., and even in our relationship with our family- understands compromise. We often give up pieces of ourselves, in order to comply or fit in with others, voluntarily. As simple as an outing with a group of friends, perhaps everyone wants to see a romantic movie, which you don’t like, but you go along anyway so you don’t end up watching an action movie on your own. There is no right or wrong about this, things are just either the way you like them (which is often ideal and improbable) or they are a compromise to something that all parties involved can “accept”. Is there a point to being yourself all the time, if it means that you don’t come to terms with anyone else most of the time?

Another thing to consider when being “yourself” is: what if you are a despicable jerk? Hehe ok I am just being dramatic, but let’s say that the whole of you include many bad habits that alienate people, or if you don’t care about alienating people, then at the least hinder you from achieving your ultimate goals, whether happiness or success, or inner peace. Does trying to be better go against “just being yourself”? Would it make a difference if you decide how you’d like to be better or if others told you what you should change? We can certainly change ourself to better in order to be happier and have people around us like us, but wouldn’t it mean so much more if we are accepted and liked for who we are, without stressing ourselves out to change?

There are definitely many questions in my head when it comes to self-identity, but as a main theme, I’d like to ask you:

1- Would you rather be yourself, to be true to yourself, or control who you are in order to fit in generally?

2- Should you accept yourself as you are or try to change for better? 

Let me hear your own thoughts below, and don’t forget to subscribe and share if you like what you read!

Who thought of it first?

I just read a status that my friend, let’s call her Sarah, wrote that was a “sort of a” deep reflection on an aspect of life. The thought in the status was more or less the same thing that another mutual friend I have, let’s call her Linda, had been repeating recently. Now, Sarah and Linda know each other well, and they have engaged with each other more lately. And the thought expressed by Sarah, whom I am familiar with pretty well, didn’t seem like something she would say... So I started thinking:

Whether we realize it or not, many of us are very impressionable. As social creatures, we tend to look for things in our surroundings to guide us in the way we think or act. Yes we often reflect on things on our own, but even that solitary reflection is often spurred by something we saw or someone we heard. Many times, we see ourselves repeating in our heads something other people had said. Whether we are agreeing to it, or denying it, the fact remains that we are driven and affected by it. Maybe it was something we were subjected to today, or maybe it was many little things we were subjected to over a span of years that we don’t even remember anymore, but they are there in our heads, guiding how we think.

Being impressionable is a double-edged sword... It can be used for good or for evil. For example, we want children to be impressionable by good behavior, to deduce their own thoughts of “we should be/do good”. But likewise, they are vulnerable to bad impressions and can end up with "bad" thoughts. Think of it in terms of trends... How trends come to happen is that one or a few people create or think of something, which leaves a very big impression on so many highly-impressionable people, and they follow it and spread it around. (Read more about this here: Malcolm Gladwell’s book “The Tipping Point”). But even those who seem to have “originated” the thought, were mostly inspired (got the impression from) by someone else who got it from someone else, and so on and so forth. So I ask:

1- Do you believe that there is anything as an “original” thought anymore, or are all our thoughts just bits and pieces from others here and there?

2- Which do you think travels faster: a good thought or a bad thought? And how can you motivate a good thought to travel while refraining a bad thought from traveling?

Please share your thoughts to the questions above in a comment below. And if you have enjoyed reading this, I hope it "impressioned" you to subscribe to my blog, and share this post! Thank you ^_^

How Do You Evaluate Yourself

image credit: tom hussey reflections series

I had a long thorough job interview, after which I was trying to assess if what I reflected was good, good enough, or not good at all, and if what the interviewer thought of me how I thought of myself, and it brought me back to many similar situations where I wondered how I see myself as opposed to how others are seeing me, then I started thinking: 

How we evaluate the things we do and say is based on our own mentality and understanding... Sometimes that’s good, because we are able to reflect on our own actions and adjust as we see fit until our actions reflect our intentions; and it helps us shut the negative false assessments of those around us. Yet sometimes it’s bad, because if we can’t account for how others think of us then we will just be trapped in what we think is best, rather than what actually works, and we won’t be able to make use of the true assessments of those around us that can actually help us be better.

What makes it even more complicated is also how we view ourselves as opposed to how others view us. There are people who are self-conceited, thinking that everything they do is perfection, disregarding the flaws that others keep pointing out in their thinking and actions. And there are those who are self-conscious, always feeling that they don’t measure up to what everyone else think of them... They don’t think they are smart enough, pretty enough, brave enough, thin enough, etc. If they are always left to evaluate themselves, is it a wonder that their assessment is always negative! 

A recent psychology study showed that we tend to be happier if we think we are good looking, rather than if we actually are in fact good looking. So basically, how we evaluate ourselves is what sets our future actions, how we live our life and how we feel. So I ask, how do you evaluate yourself:

1- Do you just reflect upon your own actions and determine whether your performance is good or bad? Then how do you make sure you don’t fall into the faults of your own thinking?

2- Do you listen to people who know you and discuss your actions with them so they’d help you evaluate your performance? If so, who’s to say that they are the best evaluate you?

Let me hear your thoughts!