Not exactly.
This is probably the most common bit of general advice you will hear in regard to finding somebody. Just be yourself! You will hear it from many different sources. It’s the message that Hollywood tries to promote to us all. That could be why it is regurgitated back at us as often as it is. Just be yourself. Well, it’s not exactly the best advice you can go about dishing out.
A lot of people figure that means that somebody is going to come along and just love them for them. Worse, a version of them that puts no effort into self-improvement. That version of them will often be kind of lazy, inattentive, and boring because of the lack of excitement in their lives.
Be your best self.
If you are a man? The cold hard truth is that nobody will ever give you unconditional love. Except maybe your mother. If you are lucky. Nobody in this world can just expect unconditional love, because nobody is guaranteed to get it. But, that’s not saying nobody gets it. Plenty of women are fortunate enough to receive love like that. Same with many dogs and cats that are kept as pets. Unconditional as in no matter what they could possibly do wrong if, at the end of it, they showed remorse to you? And a desire for your love and attention? They are basically guaranteed that. More often than not, it’s not truly unconditional, but there might be so few conditions upon it that it might as well be.
As a man, you can be loved and cared about. But those men are loved for what they provide to their partners, families, communities, or the world in general. You can be revered as an absolute legend one day, and fall victim to a fate even worse than being canceled. To be made invisible. I wanted to say forgotten, but that’s not even true. You might have been a global icon. And who you were in that moment of time, however many years ago for however long? It’s almost as though there is a disconnect.
What have you done for me lately?
Johnny Cash was beloved from the early 1950s or so until he died in 2003. And while he was celebrated through all those years, there was a disconnect that took place. Music executive Rick Rubin bumped into Johnny Cash at a restaurant in Cash’s later years. That chance meeting actually led to the Cash re-emerging as a creative icon once more in what felt like a sort of farewell tour. But Cash that night was depressed. He was eating alone. Nobody cared. Nobody. All over, people still celebrated the memory of Johnny Cash, and what he had provided them, a soundtrack to their lives. But what had Johnny done lately?
Be Authentic
In a way, the just be yourself message is exactly the answer. You need to remain genuine. You must be authentic.
The harder to understand part is that you cannot simply stay as you are either. Just be yourself is a call to mimic more successful people. Perhaps that are elements you could borrow from other people. But for the most part, you need to take anything you did borrow or copy, and make it your own. To do otherwise creates incongruency, which others can just intuitively feel. Maybe they only do so on an unconscious level, but it would manifest on the conscious level as a strange suspicion of you that they coudln’t quite put a finger on.
You can’t evolve into somebody or something else. You have to evolve into your next form. Reach whatever your own version of an increased power level is.
Is that just advice people give to troll others?
“Just be yourself?” It sounds dismissive, and unhelpful. Like something an arrogant, self absorbed, condescending bully would tell you just to troll you for laughs.
Deeper than it seems?
It’s also profound advice with a lot of death. What’s it’s trying to convey is that there is no shortcuts or cheatcodes to instantly achieve what you hope. You can’t become somebody else, you are stuck being you. So what you need to do is start to incrementally take steps in the right direction. It may see like you are being asked to move and entire mountain by hand it seems so much work. But that too is possible, so long as you can remain focused on one stone at a time.
If you want to achieve your goals, you need to be yourself. Not you as you are. A better verison of you.
