On Being Yourself

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.  — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Be yourself!”  We hear this phrase in many contexts — as advice for children worried about how to act at school, or for a junior high school student just starting to go on dates, or as general advice for having good relationships and friendships, not to mention endorsements from people like the esteemed Mr. Emerson mentioned above.  On the flip side, there are probably just as many jeering and booing as applauding this statement, suggesting that perhaps this advice doesn’t take the realities of the world into account, or that it is just too simplistic to be useful.  But what does it really mean to “be yourself”?  I think it’s not always clear what “being yourself” might mean, and not even clear what you might do to “be yourself” — but I do think that some of the ideas around “being yourself” may be relevant to having great relationships.

Saying what you “feel like saying” vs. Communicating what you feel

What might “being yourself” mean?  It could mean that you say whatever you feel like saying.  So if you’re at the opera and you feel like standing up and (inappropriately) shouting “Bravo!” in the middle of a quiet scene, you would do so.  If you’re physically attracted to someone, you would tell them, even if they’re married to your friend.  As you can imagine, saying and doing what you “feel like doing” can get you into a lot of trouble.  And sometimes our feelings conflict — we might feel like saying two different things at the same time.  So there may be some problems with saying what you feel like saying.

Perhaps even more importantly, what we feel like saying in the moment may not accurately reflect what we actually feel, as paradoxical as this may sound.  One great example of this is that when we are angry, we may have a strong urge to verbally hurt or attack the other person.  In this state, we may feel like saying things simply because they will hurt the other person, not because they actually reflect our feelings, such as “I never loved you”, etc.  And as much as we wish it weren’t the case, it seems to be part of human nature that it sometimes just “feels good” to criticize someone or yell at someone, regardless of whether we really believe the criticisms (take “Judge Judy”, for example, who seems to really enjoy telling people off).  In other words, feeling like saying something and feeling that something are two different things.

So I would propose that something more useful than “saying what you feel like saying” would be… trying to successfully communicate what you actually think and feel to others.  And here I’m going to start using “being yourself” to mean just that.  There are probably other things that would also be useful here too (such as following your own ideas about the best course of action instead of what others think is best), but for now I’ll focus on trying to accurately communicate your real thoughts and feelings.  As used here, “being yourself” can be contrasted with withholding your thoughts and feelings by not sharing them, or making up fake “thoughts and feelings” which you pretend to have but don’t really.

Communicating our thoughts and feelings applies to the words that we say, and it also applies to the emotion we express in our tone of voice, body language, facial expression, and so forth.  And it also should probably mean that we talk about things we are actually interested in (instead of pretending to be interested in things we’re not) and not just repeating things that we’ve heard other people say just to talk (but rather saying things we actually mean or care about).

Communicating your real thoughts and feelings takes skill

Saying what you feel like saying may take a lot of courage (whether it turns out to be a good idea or not), but it takes very little skill — you just blurt out whatever comes to mind.  Communicating your real thoughts and feelings so that someone else understands them, on the other hand, is hard to do well and can require a lot of skill.

Our real thoughts and feelings are often complex — we win an award and feel proud, but also embarrassed;  we find one of our friend’s habits extremely annoying, but also love and respect her.  Given this complexity and how intangible our thoughts and feelings can be, it can be difficult to communicate them so that the other person really understands them accurately.  For example, if our friend invites us to dinner and we’d like to go but are too busy, and if we just tell the friend that we’re too busy, they might believe that the relationship isn’t important to us.  In this case, it would take work to communicate the whole picture, that in fact (it turns out) we actually do value the relationship.

So communicating what you are actually thinking and feeling is a skill, and not something that can just occur by “not filtering” or “saying what you feel like saying”.

Social modification

So I’ve described what I’ll mean here by “being yourself”.  But is being yourself (by trying to communicate your real thoughts and feelings) a good idea?  To explore this, I want to bring up the opposite of being yourself, which I call “social modification”, which is trying to express not what you really think and feel, but some altered version of those.

We all learn from a very early age that other people have strong reactions to our actual thoughts and feelings.  Sometimes these reactions are positive, and sometimes they can be quite negative.  For example, a young child might learn that telling a certain joke gets the grownups to laugh and say she’s funny, but expressing her dislike for one of mommy’s friends results in a lecture and an upset mommy.  Sharing what we’re really thinking can make us vulnerable — others may be angry with us or make fun of us or try to hurt us in some way if they don’t like what we say.

Being the intelligent creatures that we are, we soon learn that by hiding, faking, or exaggerating our emotions we can change the reactions we get from people.  In this way, we socially modify what we say to others, our tone of voice, and body language.  In short, we become actors.

Social modification can be a good thing

Making social modifications to our conversation clearly has benefits.  We avoid anger, disgust, and other negative reactions that other people might have to some of the things we might say.  For example, telling someone you “hate” the Christmas present they just gave you might result in them feeling hurt and angry, which is not only bad for you (having to deal with their anger) but also for them (feeling hurt).  More seriously, in some countries expressing certain opinions is not only unpopular, but against the law, and hiding your true thoughts and feelings can be necessary just for your physical safety.  So there can be serious consequences to what we express.

And in addition to avoiding negative outcomes, making social modifications to what we say can also result in positive outcomes.  If we pretend we’re really excited that an acquaintance just arrived at a party (even though we feel just so-so about it), the acquaintance may feel good about themselves (people like having them around), which in turn may make them like being around us.  This could even lead down the road to a deeper friendship.  Similarly, telling stories we’re not really interested in, just to be able to have something to say, might ease any social awkwardness that could result from having nothing to say, and then later we may have a chance to talk about things that we are really interested in.

Some possible benefits of being yourself / not socially modifying

Like most things, social modification can be taken to an unhealthy extreme, and there are some pretty clear examples where social modification can be bad.  Lying to people in an attempt to deceive and take advantage of them, or withholding important information as an attempt to hurt others, seem clearly to be examples of social modification gone awry.  But what about the more mild types of social modification — giving others false compliments, exaggerating our excitement for something we think others like, hiding our excitement for something we like that’s unpopular?  Are there any benefits to sharing your real thoughts and feelings and not socially modifying?  I think that there can be a number of benefits:

Feelings of intimacy. It can just feel good to know a lot about another person and to have them know a lot about you.

Not having to spend effort trying to figure out what others think. We spend a lot of effort trying to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling.  When others are open and honest with us, we can stop trying to figure this out, and feel confident that we know what the situation is with them.  Others also enjoy not having to figure out what we really think.

More accurate understanding of what others think. Similarly, when we guess what other people are thinking and feeling, we often make mistakes.  This can lead to misunderstandings and unnecessary issues.  Communicating what’s really going on can clear these up.

Not having to spend effort maintaining “dual realities”. It takes a lot of work to keep up not only with what we really think but also with a socially modified version of things.  Whether we’re pretending to feel differently than we do or think differently than we really think, we have to remember the role we’re playing, put effort into generating fake emotions, and can’t “let our guard down” for fear of letting our real thoughts and feelings come out.

Getting what you want. By saying what you really want, think, and feel, you are able to have a discussion with others about those things, and this allows what your really think and want to be considered by others.  If you don’t say what you really want, it’s difficult for people to give it to you, even if they are willing to do so.  Similarly, if you have concerns about things or issues with other people, they are often unlikely to be addressed unless you communicate those concerns or issues.

Feedback and help from others. Through sharing what’s really going on in your life, you are able to get others’ opinions, suggestions, and assistance.  If you’re facing a problem and you keep it to yourself, you have to deal with it alone.  On the other hand, if you share it with others they may have ideas about solutions to your problem you may not have thought about.

Feeling like people understand you. People sometimes say that they want to be “understood”.  And I think that we do want to feel like other people “get” what we think and feel.  Sharing our real thoughts and feelings makes this possible.

Feeling free. I think there is a sense of freedom that comes with letting people know what you really think.  And conversely, there can be a sense of constraint in trying to conform to what others expect or want, or in trying to pretend in order to please others.

Gives the impression of strength. One of the perhaps more subtle benefits of sharing what’s really going on is that it can actually be viewed as a sign of strength.  Given the benefits that can come from sharing your real thoughts, in many cases it would make sense to “be yourself” unless there were reasons not to.  I suspect that many of the reasons for not sharing are based on some kind of weakness, and that deep down we have a sense of this.  In this way, there is a sense in which someone who shares their real thoughts may appear strong, and someone who socially modifies may appear weak (there are exceptions of course).  For example:
         1) A strong person doesn’t have to worry too much about what others think, and so is free to say what they really think.  A weaker person is very concerned about what others think and may try to gain approval through changing what they say to fit with what others want.
         2) A person who has nothing to hide can say what they really think, but hiding your real thoughts suggests you may have some weakness that you don’t want people to know about.
         3) Alternatively, you may not say what you really thinking because the other person is weak and “can’t handle the truth” of what you really think.
         Because of these (and because people have a sense of this), the very act of not being open and honest (which people can often tell) can come across as being weak.  For example, the kid at the party who appears to be talking about things he doesn’t really think in an effort to get people to like him, ends up coming across as very uncool.

So how does this all shake out?

It seems like there are benefits to social modifying, but also benefits to being yourself by not socially modifying and trying to communicate your real thoughts and feelings.  So, to socially modify or to not socially modify?  To be yourself or to not be yourself?  As is often the case, I suspect the best approach lies somewhere in between.

It seems to me that when possible, sharing what’s really going on can be the most rewarding — it can lead to intimacy, getting what you want, feelings of freedom, and knowing what others are thinking instead of having to guess.

The benefits of socially modifying include helping you avoid other people’s hurt feelings or disapproval, and getting good things you can’t seem to get otherwise (telling a story you’re not interested in at a party in order to get people to like you).  You might also socially modify because people you care about find certain things unpleasant (such as not talking about how great your girlfriend is around someone who’s just been through a bad breakup).

However, I imagine that there are often skillful ways to avoid bad outcomes / obtain good outcomes and be authentic and honest at the same time.  For example, when sharing something that might hurt someone’s feelings, you could deliver it in a way that shows you think that overall the person is great (that this thing doesn’t affect your relationship or their awesomeness).  And at parties you could be more skilled at coming up with stories that you actually care about.

To sum up, I imagine that “being yourself” is very rewarding when you can pull it off, but that sometimes socially modifying is necessary.  Through getting more skilled, we may increase the range of situations that we can “be ourselves” in.