“Be yourself” is terrible advice • Hacker News Board

Re: “Be yourself” is terrible advice

#81

Post by the_jends » Fri, Apr 19, 2019, 11:41 PM UTC

areyouseriousxx wrote: post #62

The reason the advice "be yourself" exists, and also why older people tend to be the ones expressing it, is that the danger in not being yourself is that you may wake up one day in a career or surrounded by people that do not accept you for who you are. And you end up trapped in a life where you have to pretend to be something you're not. The idea is that the younger you start being honest about yourself to others, t…

A possible counterpoint to that is that walking away from people has a price and it may not be easy to find people who accept you for who you are - especially if you perceive the more disagreeable side of yourself to be the more authentic.

Yes if you be yourself you might feel better, but you might lose out on friends, on a great job, on a marriage even. At the end of the day those people who regret not being themselves may not properly account for the things they wouldnt have if they had been.

Re: “Be yourself” is terrible advice

#82

Post by munchbunny » Fri, Apr 19, 2019, 11:43 PM UTC

ohaideredevs wrote: post #19

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.

The other top level comment explains the advice very well:

The reason the advice "be yourself" exists, and also why older people tend to be the ones expressing it, is that the danger in not being yourself is that you may wake up one day in a career or surrounded by people that do not accept you for who you are. And you end up trapped in a life where you have to pretend to be something you're not. The idea is that the younger you start being honest about yourself to others, the sooner you will wind up away from people that do not like your true self, and closer to people that appreciate you for that true self.

If you are an introvert, do not spend your life trying to pretend you are an extrovert. Instead, embrace your introversion and find a sustainable way to get the social interaction you need/want.

If you do not enjoy managing people, you will fall behind people who do enjoy it, so instead spending your years unhappy and trapped, try to find a career ladder where you can focus on being a great individual contributor.

If someone close to you just died and you are grieving, do not try to pretend that you're fine or cheerful for the sake of others. Take the time to process it however you need to.

There are plenty of other examples. This advice isn't really about how you act day to day, it's about making sure you are doing things for reasons you actually believe in.

Re: “Be yourself” is terrible advice

#83

Post by kthejoker2 » Fri, Apr 19, 2019, 11:58 PM UTC

I don't particularly like the simplification to 4 letters, but the Myers-Briggs test does do one thing right: it assigns positive self-worth to all 16 personality types it defines, and it addresses the challenges in the different types very clearly.

It shows how different people in this world can find paths to success without all of them having to be stamped out clones.

I think what be yourself means most of all is understanding the implications of being yourself. Self-awareness of the downsides to extreme ends of your personality - being too trusting, too cautious, too demanding, too brittle, too accommodating, too demonstrative, too anything that in and of itself is a perfectly normal human trait - goes a long way.

Re: “Be yourself” is terrible advice

#84

Post by booleandilemma » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 12:01 AM UTC

benj111 wrote: post #64

booleandilemma wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an example of a person for whom this is terrible advice? Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.

How do we know they were being themselves? Maybe Hitler's true self was being a painter, maybe the horrors of the trenches or Germanys humiliation pushed him to it? Maybe it was the rejection of not being able to sell any paintings.

HN, the place on the web I can visit if I want to find people defending Hitler.

You’re right benj111, maybe he was just misunderstood.

Re: “Be yourself” is terrible advice

#85

Post by nostrademons » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 12:01 AM UTC

devoply wrote: post #70

projektir wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are those implications from your perspective?

To tone down those tendencies in yourself that are likely to cause you to get into bad situations. For instance perhaps you love to argue, often that leads people to dislike you. Find a way to be yourself and do the things that you enjoy doing without getting contempt from other individuals and society... However, there are professions where this is impossible such as porn star for instance. If you choose such a path…

> perhaps you love to argue

Or go on HN, where everybody loves to argue.

More generally, the world is broad enough that there's usually a tribe for everyone. You may not find them in your local area. That's an impetus to go beyond your local area and seek them out.

Re: “Be yourself” is terrible advice

#86

Post by nostrademons » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 12:05 AM UTC

wwweston wrote: post #67

defertoreptar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it means that you should act in a way that more authentically represents your wants and your values. For example, if someone wants to impress someone else, they may act in a way they think is in line with that someone else's wants and values. This can result in awkward and embarrassing situations since it's not natural or well-practiced, and it can result in being deceitful. Instead it's better to acknowledge a…

Then you're back to the question of what it means to be authentic or have true values, a question that's very similar to the question of what it means to be "yourself", and while there's usually implied guides regarding extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, it's not really clear to me that there's an absolute dividing line there, or that it's even easy to sort out decidedly intrinsic/internal values into authentic or n…

Which do you choose, and which choice leaves you happier afterwards? Authenticity means being able to look back at our choices afterwards and say "Yes, I'm proud of what I did."

"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Albus Dumbledore

Re: “Be yourself” is terrible advice

#87

Post by xkcd-sucks » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 12:10 AM UTC

areyouseriousxx wrote: post #62

The reason the advice "be yourself" exists, and also why older people tend to be the ones expressing it, is that the danger in not being yourself is that you may wake up one day in a career or surrounded by people that do not accept you for who you are. And you end up trapped in a life where you have to pretend to be something you're not. The idea is that the younger you start being honest about yourself to others, t…

Also, "be" is not necessarily a state of passivity. It can be an active process of determining what your goals and life-quality factors, and of carving out space in the world for them. That your self can be an ideal, rather than a default.

Of course life is fundamentally about eating other life, except for bacteria that eat rocks. So there could be an adversarial element to it

Re: “Be yourself” is terrible advice

#88

Post by thesash » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 12:23 AM UTC

“Become the person you want to be” might better capture the sentiment we tend to express with advice like this.

Re: “Be yourself” is terrible advice

#89

Post by Syzygies » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 12:26 AM UTC

Conan O'Brien on Johnny Carson:

Rule number one is just be yourself. And that's actually the first thing, when I got the Late Night Show -- I bring them up now because they just did this great documentary about Johnny Carson -- one of the first people I talked to was Johnny Carson and he said, "Just be yourself." He said "It's the only way it can work." He didn't say it would work, because he's being honest; he didn't know me. You might be yourself and it would be terrible. But he said, "Be yourself, it's the only way." There's an honesty to that. I do think that that's a little bit timeless.

Re: “Be yourself” is terrible advice

#90

Post by geomark » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 12:42 AM UTC

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #87

areyouseriousxx wrote: post #62

The reason the advice "be yourself" exists, and also why older people tend to be the ones expressing it, is that the danger in not being yourself is that you may wake up one day in a career or surrounded by people that do not accept you for who you are. And you end up trapped in a life where you have to pretend to be something you're not. The idea is that the younger you start being honest about yourself to others, t…

Also, "be" is not necessarily a state of passivity. It can be an active process of determining what your goals and life-quality factors, and of carving out space in the world for them. That your self can be an ideal, rather than a default. Of course life is fundamentally about eating other life, except for bacteria that eat rocks. So there could be an adversarial element to it

Totally off topic, but plants and fungi don't eat other life. Plants make their own food using waste products from animals. Fungi use dead and decaying matter for food.

Even more off topic, the only reason I feel the need to comment is my kid is prepping for a Singapore Science test and they seem to have a lot of questions about this stuff.