Dating, Living, and Being Your Best Self

In a annotate on my postal service last week about living your life every bit if you lot were on a date, a reader named Jean posted this comment:

Cheers for this article! But regarding the 'be yourself' advice… I've always wondered, which self? I have a best self who is on time, considerate, well dressed, brave, follows my dreams, etc. I also have a worst cocky who is late, selfish, lazy, a slob, and a scaredy-true cat. The rest of the fourth dimension I spend climbing abroad from 1 and towards the other, but bluntly I spend more of my time near the 'worst cocky' terminate. I used to accept a long-altitude boyfriend who simply saw my 'all-time' self and therefore had an unrealistic view of me. I got tired out trying to go along up his proficient stance of me, and the human relationship crashed because I wasn't comfy.

Jean raises some really interesting questions, and I thought it would exist instructive to consider them in a longer course than is really applied as a blog annotate.

My immediate idea is that the goal is to be our best selves all the time. Just that shouldn't be exhausting; in fact, I think that when we are truly being our all-time selves, it's invigorating. Recall of that free energy nosotros go when we meet someone and autumn in love – yous find yourself all of a sudden "on the brawl" throughout your life, non just the parts that you spend with this new person. Or consider the creative person's "flow", that state of listen and activity where everything simply seems to come up naturally, where we lose runway of fourth dimension, where ideas and their execution seem to blend together into a seamless, effortless whole. What is that if not us existence our best selves?

What's exhausting is faking that. Pretending to be our all-time selves. Considering commonly we aren't actually being our best selves, we're being someone else'south idea of what our all-time self should exist – or what we imagine their idea of our best self is. Recall well-nigh it: if you dearest doing something, if doing it feeds and fulfills you on a fundamental level, how hard is it to exercise that thing, to be that person? Normally, it takes a serious endeavour to proceed u.s.a. from doing it!

This is why I hate books like The Rules, a dating guide for women that essentially smothers the best self and replaces it with a facsimile cocky crafted to avoid offending anyone and to secure a mate at all costs. Wait at some of their "Top Ten Rules":

• ii. Show upwards to parties, dances and social events fifty-fifty if you practice not experience like it.
• 5. If you are in a long-distance human relationship, he must visit your three times earlier you lot visit him.
• 8. Close the deal. Rules women do non date men for more than than ii years.

Bluntly, that sounds exhausting to me. The abiding focus on marriage (that is, living towards the future instead of living in the now), the constant self-censoring to make sure you don't put more than into your relationship than your partner, the constant deprival of your ain feelings and land of heed – is that your best self, or the authors'?

I don't know annihilation about Jean or about the situation with her long-distance ex, but I accept to wonder: was she really being her best self or the idea she had of what her all-time self should be like. I know that when I start establish myself in the dating puddle in my early on 30s, I found information technology exhausting all the time – wearing clothes that I wasn't all that comfy in because I felt they were the "right" clothes, acting a social office that I wasn't entirely comfy with (as a gender studies professor, traditional gender roles exit me flat), putting on an "all is well in the globe" mental attitude when sometimes I was nervous, overworked, or even flat broke. Information technology took me years to realize that I wasn't doing myself, or my dates, whatsoever favors by trying to exist someone other than I was – even if I somehow managed to impress them, it wasn't really me they were impressed by but another guy whose function was played by me.

My own dating life took off when I started being as honest as possible about who I am, what I want, and where I wanted things to get. I dress nice, but I don't clothes out of character. I do those "chivalrous" things because I feel like it, not because it's expected – and I await the same kind of small considerations from my date, or I permit her know that I'm really non the right kind of guy for her. I share my goals and aspirations, my values and beliefs, even my feelings on religion and politics (oh no!) freely, and encourage the same openness from my date.

I'm not saying Jean or anyone else should exist their "worst cocky", on a date or anywhere else. I'm maxim that at that place'southward a skillful chance Jean's strengths and the weaknesses she describes go paw in manus. For instance, she talks nearly existence a "scaredy-cat" – but we're all scared, to exist honest. Not merely in dating, only throughout our lives. What'southward exhausting is to pretend we're non, or to live our lives avoiding the things that scare us. Existence our best selves doesn't hateful not existence afraid, it ways being honest about existence scared, accepting that fear, and forging forwards in spite of it. Jean talks about being lazy – but nosotros're often lazy out of fear, fright of failure, fright of being imperfect, fear of letting people (including ourselves) down. I'm not saying "be lazy", I'm maxim that laziness can easily arise out of a want to do well by ourselves and by others and the worry that nosotros can't live up to that desire. When we open up to others in a real, honest mode, those fears often dissipate – or at to the lowest degree become things we tin can deal with rather than things that control the states.

Do yous see what I'm proverb? When I say "be yourself", I don't mean cave in to your worst impulses, I hateful put your real strengths on brandish while being honest – with yourself, especially – about how those strengths and your weaknesses fit together. Or more to the betoken: let yourself be human being.

Hither's the matter: in dating as in business concern, teaching, marketing, writing, and simply almost everything else, information technology'southward skillful to offend people, if you come by it honestly. I don't mean you should offset swearing at strangers, of course, simply that the goal is to draw to yourself the people who are actually uniform, whether as partners, business associates, audiences, or customers, and avoid the ones who only are non. Take a lesson from Apple tree, whose "I'thou a Mac" commercials piece of work precisely considering they offend – they offend people who would never purchase a Mac, and create a sense of community among the ones who would and do.

To bring this down to the concrete, I would wager that Jean's relationship – similar so many others – failed not because it was simply too exhausting to be her all-time self, but because the person she was being when she tried to be that best cocky wasn't actually her. Peradventure the relationship itself was on shaky ground, perchance she didn't yet take the conviction in herself necessary for a strong relationship, maybe her partner wasn't gear up to have her equally her whole self. This is speculation, of course, but I think if the "best self" Jean put forwards had actually been her, she would take plant it energizing, not tiring.

I don't pretend any of this is easy. I struggle to live upwardly to what I'g maxim here every single twenty-four hours, and I fail near equally ofttimes. But they're instructive failures, interesting failures – and with each one I feel a petty closer to my best self. Promise this helps!

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/dating-living-and-being-your-best-self.html