Unless You’re Oprah, ‘Be Yourself’ Is Terrible Advice
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I find it interesting how the current culture is confusing social norms and personal acceptance when they want to then say "be a special snowflake". Not everyone will like you and that's okay. No one has to like you, except for you. You should like yourself. Generally speaking. Same goes with not liking everyone else. No one will like everyone. Again, nothing wrong with that. That happens when you foster self worth. Social cues are then far easier to manage when you learn that you can pick and choose who you can like and appreciate. It's easier to ignore assholes and enjoy the time with good people.
Monitoring social cues and being yourself are two different things. Being yourself means that you don't agree with everyone around you always to appease them. Social cues, or the self monitoring as they like to say is knowing when to say "I don't agree because xyz" or "you're a dumbass".
Damn it I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. Did tech really make society this stupid this fast?
One of my favourite traits/quirks is making jokes that are guaranteed to bomb for anyone but myself or maybe someone who isn't present. I'll get confused looks and just say, "don't worry, the cosmos found that one hilarious."
I understand being self actualize is great, but part of growing is what is more valuable to you isn't what you know but it's what other people know. If your not integrating yourself part of social circles you miss out on leads and adventures you wouldn't of otherwise found if you're sitting by yourself because no one want's to interact with yourself because you haven't developed yourself more than yourself.
(paraphrased)- Paul Lutus
Psychology is an extremely complex science, similar to weather forecasting. We still don't get forecasting right beyond a couple of days at best. There are so many factors and moving parts in the brain, that its impossible right now to take them all into account. Especially since every psychologist would agree, we still don't know all of the moving parts yet. It's also a very young field in comparison. It's only been a serious scientific endeavor since the Freud and Jung time. Roughly only 100 years.
Science must be quantifiable, repeatable, testable, and have controlled experimental conditions, an agreed upon terminology, etc. etc.
Simply asking people how they feel then sprinkling some statistics over the responses to try to grasp meaning isn't really the scientific method.
That's not to say belief systems aren't important, they are. Nor to say psychology might not provide help to people or insights, I'm sure it can in the hands of a trained practitioner.
But as for it being a "science", Lutus' claim is very fair, and I think he is right.
You also have to realize that not everything is perfectly quantifiable if you don't know how to quantify yet. Under your assumption, we should just give up entirely on trying to understand how and why people think the way they do. The right questions still aren't figured out yet. Hell, don't forget there were problems with predicting orbits with newtonian physics. It wasn't until einstein's theory of relativity that fully figured out orbits of local solar system objects. Does that mean that newton should have been thrown out immediately and the field of astro physics should have been trashed? You're living in an imaginary reality that all answers are perfectly figured out in the first try. That's not science.
Again, psychology is young and there are a ton of unanswered questions. It's not like "people thinking" is fake. We do it. How and why? It's trying to better understand how the most complex structure that we know of works, the brain. Neuroscience explains the gears and pulleys. But it can't recreate a functioning brain. Both neuroscience and psychology would need to be mastered to do so.
It's not a new idea.
Eventually it leads to where we are now: Living in a (hopefully temporarily) post fact society, where loud enough lies function as truth, where politicians have long since given up on the idea of genuinely believing anything they say, where corporate leaders own governments and chuckle at the idea of caring about the general wellbeing of mankind.
And where all the bullshit has lead to lots of tiny decisions based on misinformed priorities, cumulatively resulting in the largest mass extinction event in 100's of millions of years and a genuine existential threat to the human race.
I think authenticity is a very practical cultural goal. Misused and misunderstood sometimes maybe, but much needed.
Being yourself in this context is to me more about having a certain resilience to social responses -- being confident and without remorse with your words and actions, because they're grounded in your beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour. Just because you're being authentic doesn't mean everybody will like what you're saying or doing. But if you're authentic you can take it or leave it and keep going.
for example, i deliberately don't cross roads on a red light, even if everyone else is doing it. that's something that i decided i want to be part of the person i want to be. but when i go with friends, i have to watch out not to betray that by just following them.
To me "Be Yourself" doesn't meant to blurt out everything in your head it means don't try to be something you're not.
In my experience people can subconsciously pick up on authenticity and if you're trying to be something you're not you're just going to fall flat on your face.
To put it simply to be yourself is to always strive for genuine connections and goals which truly interest and excite you, in work, love or whatever
"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific."
This article might be junk.