HOW TO BE YOURSELF AROUND OTHER PEOPLE

I’ve probably spent most of my life trying to understand how to “be myself when I’m around other people”. Growing up as a #shy kid, I didn’t really know how to express myself in a way that was true to me. This meant that I was often uncomfortable when I was around certain people - EVEN IF I liked the company of people. During my childhood, I spent so many days calculating how I would operate around people - what was my personality? What was my tone? Who was I? What was my character? YUP! Up until the last 3 or 4 years, I was of the belief that I needed to be some sort of character when I was around people. But after a little (read: a lot) #self-discovery, observation and experimentation, I learned a lot about what it took to bring my REAL SELF out when I was around people.

So what was my first step? Well. I only had ONE STEP.

EXPERIMENT.

I experimented with personalities. I know that sounds SO RIDICULOUS, but when you’re in a position when you don’t really know much about how to project the real you when you’re around people who intimidate you, it’s hard to identify how to be. So I figured - “hey, maybe I need to build a personality”.

University days arrived, and I decided that this was the best time to re-invent myself. From the shy girl, I converted my personality into this outgoing, #confident girl. And I liked it. I made a lot of friends. This lasted for a little while until I outgrew University and found myself in the workplace. By now, I found that I would “chameleon” my way into being with people. What I mean by that is that I would gauge the personality of the people I was with, and would adapt my #personality to suit theirs. But still, there were groups of people that really intimidated me no matter how well I could adapt. These were “cool people”, and “successful people”. I just felt like they were above me - because they didn’t seem to care what other people thought, and also, they had achievements that made me think myself inferior. So I masked the feeling of inferiority by “niceness” and then “shyness” and then a little bit of “blazaeness”.

Sounds painful huh?

It was in a very subtle but deep way.

So yeah, I experimented. Personality 1 was a very nice and outgoing girl. Personality 2 was less outgoing and more of a fly-on-the-wall. Personality 3 was “I don’t care”. All of which were exhausting. Like, don’t ,me the wrong, I could be myself around my family and closest friends. As an adult, it was mainly around OTHER PEOPLE that I didn’t know, or even senior staff at my work place who I felt uncomfortable around.

Finally, I tried one more thing. Listening. Listen to the people and respond. Show interest and let conversation flow from there.

Here’s the big discovery. I found that being with other people was less about thinking about my performance, but BEING with people. TO BE. Once I got my little voice out of my head - you know, the little voice that calculates and over-analyses - once I got that out of my head, I was finally able to focus on listening to the things that people were saying - and as a result, I was able to contribute with honesty.

This has been a regular development. It didn’t just happen overnight. But as living proof, I wanted to show you that it is more than possible to learn ourselves enough in such a way that we CAN be around other people and enjoy each others company. There IS NO hierarchy. And it lays very much in the understanding that we each have something to learn from each other.

I hope you enjoyed this episode :)

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