- Just be yourself has become sort of a statement
that people venerate these days.
People celebrate just be yourself,
probably because it kinda feels like a warm hug.
Just be yourself and everything's gonna be okay.
It feels kind of empathetic, understanding.
It's like, yeah, you're right.
I can just be myself.
That sounds fantastic.
I don't have to be anything that I'm not.
Just be yourself feels like it really cares about you,
despite the fact that nobody really follows that advice
because you can't really follow it.
Everybody is a chameleon of sorts.
When you're around the boys having a beer,
you're gonna act way differently
than you do when you're around your mom.
When you're at a job interview,
you're going to be all proper and professional
and maybe a little bit personable,
way more charming than you would
if you're just relaxing on the couch
devolving into degeneracy,
trying to watch something on Netflix.
We do this because we kind of have to.
Different situations that we're in
recruit different parts of us, different emphases.
Sometimes we have to be professional,
other times we have to be very charming and funny
like I'm doing right now.
I'm not like this in real life,
but I've gotta film a Better Ideas video
so I sound super smart and personable and relatable.
The point I'm trying to make
is that are we ever really ourselves?
What does it mean to be ourselves?
And is it something that we should strive to be?
Because just be yourself
has become something
that we've been conditioned to believe is true
based on repetition.
Maybe the Walt Disney company
got us all believing that we should just be ourselves,
make our dreams come true,
follow our heart,
find our passion.
All of these bubblegum,
cotton candy, birthday card sentiments
that all sound very comforting
but don't really mean anything
and are impossible to just apply to your life.
We hear these things so often,
they've become utterly meaningless.
Nobody's life was ever changed
by somebody saying to them, "Hey,
"just follow your dreams."
What does that mean?
I've had some pretty (beep) up dreams in my day.
And if we were to follow those dreams,
we would all be screwed.
God help us all.
And follow your passion,
most people that you talk to
have no idea what their passion is.
They have things they're interested in,
probably a bunch of things they're interested in,
but there's a lot of pressure in like, oh,
find your passion and everything's gonna work out.
There's a lot of pressure in that
because people get analysis paralysis.
They have no idea which passion to pick.
What's gonna be the one thing
that makes everything make sense?
And again, I think that we tend to agree
with these taglines,
not because they're particularly instructional,
but because they sound like they mean well.
They're very easy to swallow.
It's never challenging or uncomfortable
to believe that the answer to all of our problems
is to just be more of ourselves,
whatever that means.
But I think that just being yourself
is inherently a defeatist statement
because just implies that yourself is something to just be.
It's a reality to regress back to.
It tells you to stop reaching and stop pursuing
and just be you because you're just you.
It's an inherently pessimistic statement
veiled in self-congratulation.
A statement that doesn't want the best for you,
a statement that doesn't care about your ideals,
your conception of a brighter future.
It's a statement that encourages you to stop growing.
But riddle me this,
why just be yourself when you can be so much more?
Now you might think to yourself, well,
I can only just be myself, right?
If I'm always striving to be more than myself
then I will never feel okay with myself.
I'll never feel comforted.
I'll never feel okay with who I am,
and instead I will hold this future version of myself
in front of me like a carrot to a mule,
hamster wheeling myself,
I guess mule wheeling yourself right into your grave.
You'll never be able to stop and smell the roses.
You'll always be looking for the next thing.
Goals and goals and goals.
And you'll be searching for a peace
that you could find in the present moment.
And while I understand this argument,
I also think it's very shortsighted.
It doesn't take into account
the bigger picture of the human brain,
and that is that, yes,
we do need to feel satisfied and happy with what we have.
That's what serotonin and oxytocin and endorphins are for.
They're all for feeling good in the present moment.
It's a very important system of our psychology,
but potentially way more influential
and important for our survival
is our dopamine system.
And dopamine is all about motivation.
If somebody were to delete all the dopamine
in your brain right now
so you couldn't feel a lick of dopamine,
you would lay down in whatever chair you're sitting on
because you'd probably not have the motivation to sit down
and you would never lift a finger to do anything.
You would pee your pants
because you wouldn't be motivated to go to the bathroom.
You wouldn't get up to eat anything.
You would literally lay there and die.
We need motivation
to go get things that we don't already have.
It's the only reason why you're alive right now.
So in a way, motivation is the desire
to attain something that we don't already have.
It's something that requires us to move in space and time
to go get,
and that will never go away, right?
We will always be motivated to do something.
The question is, what are we locking our motivation into?
Is it Netflix?
Is it social media?
Is it buying frivolous things?
No judgment,
I'm just saying that it's locked into something.
So since we have this profound desire
to achieve things that we haven't already achieved
or to get things that we don't already have,
what better thing is there
to lock our motivation system into
than being the best version of ourselves
so that that we can be more capable people,
capable of helping ourselves
get through the hardships of life
so that we can help others
get through the hardships in their lives,
essentially making the world a better place
through being the best we can be.
So I think that two things can be true at the same time.
We can both strive for greatness
and be the best that we can be,
not settling for just being ourselves.
But at the same time,
having honesty and compassion for wherever we are now.
But a lot of the time,
we have very weird tendencies and behaviors
that we think are just a part of who we are,
but in fact they are behaviors
that we learned through trauma
or the role that we played
in our friends group or our family
that lead us to do things that don't actually serve us,
they don't serve others.
And all in all, they're just a negative.
Even though it's like, oh, that's just me, ha-ha,
you'd be surprised
how many aspects of your personality are improvable.
You might think
that it's just a little quirk or insanity that you have,
but consider the fact that you can improve it.
You can modify your behavior and your thought patterns
to better serve you.
And things that you previously thought
were just part of your personality or you being you
are things that are just a result
of the way you are brought up
and things that don't actually help you in the long run.
Don't get self-compassion confused with complacency.
For instance, if you had a close friend
and he kind of went off the deep end,
previously you were really good friends,
you got along,
and then he started to become kind of toxic.
He started pushing you and others away
through his behaviors,
through his words.
And you're kinda like, what gives?
This guy has changed
and I don't know if I wanna be around him anymore,
but I do really care about him.
But for now, I have to distance myself.
If this person were to come up to you sincerely and say,
"Hey, look, I realize my behavior was out of line.
"I didn't really realize it at the time,
"but it's become clear to me that I need to change.
"My words and my actions are hurting me or hurting others
"and I'm ready to change."
Would you say, "No, it's okay.
"Just be yourself.
"You do you."
You would probably say, "I agree.
"Your behavior was out of line.
"I'm so glad that you can see that.
"And since I care about you,
"I really want to help you be the best version of yourself
"so that you can serve yourself better
"and get along with everybody," right?
I want you to be the best you can be.
And it's funny because loving that person
isn't just permitting them to do their thing
and be who they are and whatever,
that's complacency.
Since you care about that person,
you want to help them be the best version of themselves.
I truly believe that we need to treat ourselves like this.
We need to treat ourselves like we have inherent dignity,
like we are on our own side
and we want the best for ourselves.
And a lot of the time,
we don't treat ourselves with the dignity that we deserve.
Our behaviors and our actions
or maybe habits or ways of thinking
or thought patterns that we have,
that we've had since the dawn of time,
as long as we can remember,
are proving with time to not serve us,
to be destructive.
Maybe we learned these tendencies through childhood
and they're just a part of who we are,
but they're leading us to the brink of doom.
We gain no traction in our lives.
Nothing's working, should we just be ourselves then?
So ask yourself,
are you living a life that reflects your inherent dignity?
Are your thoughts, behaviors and habits serving you?
Who do you ideally want to be?
And what can you do to help you become somebody of strength?
And the bizarre thing is
when we start caring more about our future,
when we have ideals,
when we have something to strive towards,
we actually start to become more satisfied
with the present moment.
And especially when you've been on that path
for a little while,
you can look to your past
and you have a track record of growth.
You can be comforted that you've come a long way,
and you can be excited and motivated
by the person that you're becoming.
Self-satisfaction can't exist in a vacuum.
It's impossible to shake our concept
of the true, the good and the beautiful.
So maybe the answer to life isn't to just be yourself.
Maybe the answer is to love yourself enough
to become something more.
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