“Be yourself” is terrible advice

"Be yourself" as advice is bad advice if you take it uncharitably. It's good advice for individuals that repress their identities and discard their own happiness - e.g. gay men and women that force themselves to act straight (though not without caveat as death/execution/persecution is very real). If you reinterpret it as "be authentic" or "become yourself", it again takes a better meaning for those without fundamental crises of identity. Self-actualization is at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs for good reason. Despite this I don't disagree with the advice to "be less yourself". I don't think article is wrong and this advice still resonates with me - taking detours is part of life. If you need to take a step back to take two steps forward, it's worth it - but god damn it you should still "be yourself" at the end of it all. If you have to lose who you are, it's not worth it.

What I learned was, "be yourself" is terrible advice if "yourself" is the kind of person who writes for Gawker.

Yes, be yourself. Own who you are.

Accept who you are, brutal honesty.

Then begins a self talk. You can't really have it be meaningful prior to brutal self acceptance.

Own your future. Who you are today is not who you have to be, or even will be.

It is all about who you can be and why.

When that why is rooted in your reasons, the change comes easy and it will endure too.

In all of that is the difference between having to manage a layer of abstraction, forethought, dedicated to some sort of compliance or show

, and

thought as action, your very nature being that which makes sense, treats others, itself well.

Own yourself. Others doing it for their reasons will leave you a mess, inhibited. Don't do it.

Edit: how do I know?

Did exactly what I put here in my 20's. Walked away from ugly family issues, religion and a lot of hate and intolreance.

Married someone better than me, in the gets people sense, and she did the same in the technical sense. We made each other better.

Owned it all the day I walked. Resolved to sort every last bit if all that shit and did, one long drive to work at a time, and one simple choice at a time.

Starting is the hardest. Once doing this becomes part of your nature, the rest follows naturally.

Another edit:

Parts of this struck me the wrong way. Comment removed. Too harsh. Their story is solid.

Is is things like this:

>holistic self does not exist; we are made of many selves that are revealed through endless experimentation and self-examination.

I would argue the self grows and matured, can become more complex, or simplify, based on experiences, and choices.

Many selves, to me, is a compartmentalized mind, presenting fragments based on context.

Those compartments can be resolved as the self-lies, failure to reach self acceptance are resolved.

Lies compartmentalized our reason. So can simple error, denial.

There is the reason, and there is what is associated with the lie or elevation of error or belief to fact. Reasoning across these boundaries us difficult and can be a source of anxiety to some, anger, shut down for others.

The sense of who you are does not have to be so fragmented. That same process of self discovery and ideally acceptance can be revisited to decompartmentalize and congeal who we are into a more atomic entity.

I would argue we benefit from doing that.

Some people aren't too happy about past-you either.

Be yourself is a non-statement. I don't know what it means. Does it mean follow my primal urges? Follow my idealistic goals? It doesn't say anything.