How to Be Yourself
Meeting new people? Going on a date? Nervous about a meeting?
The advice is always the same: just be yourself.
But who is that?
The advice is right, but it’s incomplete. It doesn’t say why, how, or even what being yourself looks like. I’m here to help.
Be Your Selves
First, we need to get on the same page about something — you’re not just one person. I talk about this in my pieces on free will, death, and self-care, but here are the basics:
- Now You is thought — a continuous conscious experience of the world. Your brain packages this experience into stories you can understand and interact with. Two of those stories are Next You and Past You.
- Next You is a theory. They don’t exist yet. They are a fiction. They are also the only self that we can change and we can change them pretty radically. Now You’s choices shape Next You’s reality.
- Past You is a tale — a legend we tell ourselves to make sense of what we’ve done so far. They’re also the only self that others have ever experienced. (By the time your choices are experienced in the world, the Now You that decided on them is in the past.)
It’s all a little abstract, I get that. Think of it like this: tomorrow, today will be yesterday. It will never actually be tomorrow, nor is it ever yesterday. It’s the same with you.
And what do we do with this knowledge? It really all boils down to this:
Now You exists to help Next You by learning from Past You.
(The best way to help Next You is by helping humanity, but we won’t dig into that here. I cover that elsewhere.)
(Also, the above is pretty much the meaning of life if you were curious.)
So Which Self?
If you’re going to be yourself and also acknowledge that you have three selves, you’re now in a bind. Which self will you be?
Let’s look at the options.
- Past You is the only one of you that other people know so that could be convenient. But, and this is a big but, they are gone and they’re not coming back. Their decisions, memories, and reputations are pretty much settled.
- Now You, your unique, subjective experience, is private almost by definition. Sharing this self might be the most authentic choice, but I’m not sure it’s possible.
- Next You isn’t real yet, but that means you can work with them. They are, or could be, who you want to be. They might be an iterated version of who you already are or a complete reimagining. But they’re yours.
Yes, Next You is a story. They aren’t real, but that doesn’t mean they’re a lie. Everything is a story. The question is just whether you can make a solid bet that they’re a true story.
It is important to mention that telling the story of Next You does not mean hiding Past You or ignoring Now You’s instincts. Next You will contain both those folks.
But they don’t have to be constrained by them.
The Myth of Authenticity
If you’re representing the story of your next self instead of your real, genuine current self, isn’t that inauthentic?
Yeah, a little.
So?
Authenticity is a myth. The real, authentic universe is infinite and incomprehensible. The real, authentic self is equally infinite and incomprehensible. Why try?
Even if they do exist, they won’t fit into language or action. They definitely won’t fit into someone else’s head. No one really knows you — they just have a story of you.
(The same is true of you and others, by the way. You’re not mad at someone, you’re mad at your story of them. When we care about people, we try to make our stories of them as complete as possible, but they’re still stories.)
Stories are the only option.
Once you acknowledge that, you can decide what kind of story you want to tell.
Telling Your Story
You’ve probably heard about “personal brands,” this idea that you should try to guide how people think or talk about you in order to benefit your career.
If you’re rolling your eyes, you’re not alone.
But we can’t ignore the fact that we’re telling stories about ourselves no matter what. Shouldn’t that story reflect how you want the world to see you?
When you’re telling that “self-story,” you’re telling it to yourself too. It works better when you tell the same story to everyone.
It’s not authentic. It’s just consistent.
Consistency matters.
That means, in general, it’s not a bad idea to keep your self-story pretty simple and let the details sort themselves out.
“Be yourself” means you match how you present yourself to how you see yourself.
It might feel artificial to be so intentional about your story and your self. You could also ignore it and leave it to chance — that works for a lot of people.
But, whether you write it intentionally or accidentally, it’s still a story you’re telling.
Your Personal Genre
When branding, marketers need to know what aisle they fit into. If you’re selling laundry detergent, you won’t market to board game buyers.
Our self-stories follow similar rules. You want to be found by people who are looking for people like you. Which aisle are they looking for?
You can think of this as the genre of your self-story. If I want science fiction, I’m going to those shelves. If I want reliability, I’m going to those people.
Of course, people don’t fit into easy buckets. There aren’t established genres for us to fall into. There isn’t a “reliable people” aisle for us to explore. Instead, it’s a matter of how we feel about someone after we meet them. And how we feel about ourselves.
Self-stories and their genres are for you, to help you identify and present a consistent self. How others see you is their business.
Who you are is yours.
I find it helpful to think of genres as simple, high-level adjectives. For me, the word is “earnest.” I want to be someone who cares, someone who thinks, someone who tries.
When you pick a genre, the most important things you’re doing is not picking a lot of other genres. If you’re earnest, you probably aren’t incredibly fun. If you’re confident, you might not be that curious. If you’re helpful, you might not be focused.
It is fine to not be fun. It is fine to not be everything to everyone, displaying every virtue there is. This is hard to believe, but true.
Going Deeper
Your genre helps weed out the folks who want someone that you aren’t, but it doesn’t tell people much about who you are. It’s intentionally a big, vague bucket. Your self-story is more complex than that.
With the genre sorted, now you’ll want jacket copy — the headline. What’s the most important thing readers need to know about your story?
For me, it’s three words. My personal values: curiosity, courage, and compassion.
For you, it might be more or less. It might be a sentence or a paragraph. A personal mission statement, maybe, or a meaningful quote. My recommendation is simply that you know what it is.
If you know your genre and headline, you know what being yourself looks like.
For instance, I was home-schooled until 7th grade, when I went to a public school where my social skills were painfully different from everyone else’s. Even as I grew older, amassing evidence that my skills were more than adequate, I didn’t have a way to prove that I wasn’t that awkward middle-schooler any more.
My headline solves that problem. Now, I have a definition for a successful interaction: can I say that I earnestly showed curiosity, courage, and compassion?
If yes, yay! I just won that interaction; I was myself. It might feel weird to gamify interactions this way, but it does wonders for shutting up self-doubt. Social anxiety now has competition.
And I’ve found that this internal game improves how people react to me as well. The game distracts the overthinking parts of my brain (which, to be fair, are most of it) and just lets me be myself.
If the interaction wasn’t successful, I’ll consider new choices next time or reconsider my self-story.
Because your story can change. It should change, because you do. My self-story once hinged on the goal of becoming a successful screenwriter. Updating it saved me a lot of regret and headache.
Being a Better Self
Please do not allow your self-story to add pressure or stress to your life. If I fail to be curious, I’m not failing my potential. In fact, I’m living up to it.
I am a human and humans are imperfect by definition.
The perfect human does not meet their goals 100% of the time. If they did, they wouldn’t be human. The perfect human has imperfections and always will.
How else would we improve?
Now You is an infinite being — a unique perspective on an infinite universe. It is impossible for an infinite system to have an ideal final form, so how do infinite things grow?
The universe expands by finding room inside itself. Distinguishing the parts that make it up. For it, to be is to grow.
I don’t think we’re so different.
Every moment, we adjust to better fit the world that surrounds us. Obviously we don’t always get it right. We can’t. But we can get better. Ever better.
This might be hard to hear, but you are the perfect version of yourself. For now, anyway — every day, you get more perfect. Perfection for living systems is growth, nothing more.
This is why you are not your mistakes. Now You is a different person from the Past You that made those mistakes. Clean them up, sure, but don’t let them hold Next You back.
Also, by the way, this is why judging people is a bad idea. The person who did something you don’t approve of is gone and has grown by the time you see the consequences of their bad choice.
We can judge actions, and some actions can be perfect. But it’s not our job to perform perfect actions — it’s our job to grow.
Unpacking Identity
All that growth is easier said than done, of course. But it starts small. It happens in the actual text of your story. One choice at a time.
Our identities are fundamental parts of our stories. Every decision we make has the same shape: who we are defines why and how we do what we do.
And who we are is a story we tell.
Often, our self-stories originate from the people around us. For instance, the story of my gender identity started when the doctor made a cisnormative assumption and said, “it’s a boy!”
If you didn’t write your self-story, it may need to be rewritten. Whatever it is, it will be reflected in every action you take.
- You define who you are to yourself.
- Who you are to yourself defines how you act.
- How you act defines how you’re seen.
- How you’re seen defines who you are to the world.
The reality outside you doesn’t see anything but the consequences of your actions — where you go, how you dress. That’s all that’s true to anyone but you.
The rest is stories.
Stories matter.
Stories are where you decide what you’ll do next. What you do is all anyone else has to go on.
Updating Identity
So how can you be sure that your stories are working for you? Let’s do an exercise.
- Open up a spreadsheet or notebook.
- Write down as many of your identities as you can think of. (I had 42, everything from son-in-law to writer to U.S. citizen.)
- For each one, ask “Is this a true story?” (All identities are stories, but some have paperwork. e.g. spouse, parent, employee, etc.)
- For each one, ask “Is this a helpful story?” (Does it spark joy? Do you like thinking that about yourself? Does it help you move through the world or help others understand who you want to be?)
- For each unhelpful story, ask “How can I change this?” If it’s real, consider a change in your life. If it’s not, consider a new story.
If you are telling yourself useless stories, there is one astoundingly simple solution: stop.
Some recent examples that have worked for me:
- I have needed to get more exercise into my life for years, but my identities have pushed against it. If I’m a nerdy writer, why would I prioritize a workout? Recently, I’ve introduced exercise that feels like a game — now it’s a part of my game nerd identity. Plus, my whole genre is “earnest,” which means I gotta try.
- I’ve struggled with my identity as an American for as long as I’ve been aware of it. Sure, I was born here, but our culture has never felt right to me. I vote and pay taxes, but that doesn’t mean I need to internalize it. I hope one day to move to a place that feels more like home, but until then I’m a man without a country (despite the paperwork).
- I used to be a night owl, but found that saving all my time to myself for the end of the day meant I was guaranteed to be too tired to do anything fun or productive. I moved my morning 2 hours earlier and now start my day better. I’m not a morning person yet, but the night owl identity is gone. (Please note, I am not one of those Medium writers who believes being a morning person is a Moral Good. I’m just finding what works for me.)
All of these stories fundamentally change my behavior and my headspace, and they all started with one simple question: “Why do I identify that way?”
If your answer to that question includes the same cultural noise and assumptions mine did, add a “scientist” identity and experiment with a change.
A Better Way to Be Me
If you did the exercise above, you might have realized there is a long long list of identities that you’ve attached to yourself. And every one of those identities is a relationship, isn’t it?
(When I did the exercise, I actually included a column for that.)
But I’m also willing to bet that there’s an identity you didn’t write down. The only one that stays with you your whole life, regardless of any other relationship.
Above all, you are a “self.”
I could abandon every identity I have, and I’d still have that one. It’s an odd one, because there aren’t a lot of stories attached to it. But it’s also the most important.
How do you be a good self? I’ve written on how to take care of yourself, but that didn’t do much to cover how to be a better self. Especially considering we’ve just learned there is no one true or ideal self.
The secret is in the relationship. A great parent is great for their kids. A great neighbor is great for their neighbors.
A great self is great for themselves.
It’s not about authenticity, or what other people want, or some false notion of who you truly are.
It’s a simple question: Is your self-story working for you?
It’s never too late to tell a new one.
