Shush voice in my head.
Anyways, I have lived much of my life roughly according to the following: "if you are awesome enough, people will naturally be attracted to you." Or, another way of putting it, your natural state should be able to make people interested. Be yourself. And if being yourself = being awesome, you are a winner. This has the underlying assumptions that 1) people are naturally interested in cool/interesting people and 2) organically grown "natural" relationships are the best.
The first one makes a lot of sense at face value. I certainly like hanging around interesting people. They tend to make life interesting.
It's the second reason that can be a bit of a trap. On one hand, you don't want to force fake relationships. Being someone you are not, hiding behind a mask, is not healthy and can lead to some very unhappy moments. Plus you either will always have a barrier up (not conducive to deep relationship and trust me people will pick up on it), will have to work really hard to maintain the persona for an extended period of time through a variety of complicated situations (hint, really hard), or eventually somehow morph into that person (hint, really freakin' hard). So don't go around trying to please people, you have to be yourself. On the other hand, taking things "naturally" means to some a very passive approach to relationships. You just be yourself and "let the win roll in" as it were. People who are worth it and like me will naturally flock to me and I just have to wait for them to come.
Just FYI, that's complete and utter crap.
People may care about how naturally awesome you are. We get interested and wowed by athletes and brilliant minds and smooth talkers. But as detailed in this article they are even more interested in whether you will invest in their lives. If you are not interested in them, then most people are not interested in you.
I mean, let's face it. Why would I expect people to come and ask me to hang out if I never ask them? If I continually say I have a scheduling conflict why would they keep inviting me to events? If I never put effort into a relationship, a sharing of a life, then why expect someone else to put theirs out in the open? Because I'm just that awesome and if-only-they-took-the-time-to-find-out-the-real-me and
yeah right.
The best way of showing how awesome you are is to spend time and share things/experiences/thoughts. Investing in others causes them to open up. And when they open up, they will share about themselves. And if you have commonalities, you can share that part of your life too. And the reciprocation cycle becomes a positive feedback loop. A lot better than waiting for them to ask about your awesomeness that you keep hidden behind a mask of boredom. This is why commonalities naturally form the basis of relationships and friendships.
Granted, investing in yourself is also good. As many previous posts show I am a huge advocate of self-improvement. But just investing in yourself and expecting the rest of the world to automatically want to be your friend is silly. Why? Because it is rare people will ever find out about your awesome secret skill set. It's kinda a secret. You can't keep charging admission to get a glimpse of "who you really are". People will naturally just head to the attraction that not only doesn't charge an entry fee but gives out free ice cream and hugs to boot.
In short, don't expect people to take time to find out about the "real you" if you don't put in the time to find out the "real them." If you're looking for maximum friendship for your time, invest it in other people instead of yourself. It's more about value added than value extracted. Be the most awesome listener your friends know.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to go beat up myself.
Don't let him get away with this! Call the police! He's a deranged schizophrenic stupid meanie face! HELP! HEL
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