As someone with high TSIH (Time Spent in Head), I often find that before and during conversations, without realizing it I’ve been gaming out what a person might want to hear. So much so that if I’m not careful, I’ll miss out on parts of the actual conversation itself. As an example: turns out I’m bad with names not because I don’t care about them, but because I’m so concerned with saying my own name correctly when meeting someone new that I don’t even register what the other person has just said theirs is. I’m kidding, of course. Mostly.
So. Here we find ourselves, at the outset of an essay that could easily turn into 1000 words about the costs of people-pleasing. Truthfully, though, I think there’s more to this impulse and the way it warps behavior. It’s really a mix of anxiety and fear over showing one’s true colors and finding that they really don’t fit on someone else’s palette—especially if you admire that person. Sure, there’s often a crust of conflict avoidance on top, but you don’t have to poke too hard to get to the raw vulnerability hiding underneath. This is about being a little bit (or a lotta bit) too self-concerned. And giving up the opportunity to truly connect as a result.
In a professional context, there’s long been a discussion about bringing your authentic self to work, and we can let Harvard Business Review get into the polished, now trite particulars of it. I bring it up here because in general I find the concept pretty funny. It always seems to start as an earnest call to freely and openly be exactly who you are in personal contexts, so as to forge deeper relationships that result in a comfortable environment and higher productivity. Then this principle inevitably comes into conflict with a code of conduct, written or unwritten, when someone behaves like an asshole in such a way that distracts people and threatens productivity. The asshole will seldom fail to point out that they were encouraged to act exactly as they have—authentically—and damnit if that isn’t a fair point! Throw biases and identity politics into the mix, and suddenly you’re in a mess that makes everyone question just how much authenticity is appropriate or even desired.
Why is this funny? Well, because, yeah. It’s good to be genuine at work. But regardless of who you are, it’s silly to get mad when being an asshole works against you in a place where you’ve signed a contract to receive money in exchange for your labor and you start behaving in ways that make it harder for people around you to provide their labor. To some degree, the same could be said about relationships in general—of course you can genuinely express yourself. But don’t be surprised if your flavor isn’t for everyone, or even most people. You can’t control that.
For me, the problem of genuinely being genuine outside of work is that—probably because I’m an anxious person—I assume by default that any even slightly conflicting notion I may have with another person reflects upon me as being an asshole, when that’s almost always untrue and fully always in the context of a contract that’s anything but transactional. So as a result I spend a lot of time mind-reading, a self-dug pitfall if I’ve ever heard of one, as opposed to truly listening and being present for a given conversation. This is something I’m at least pretty aware of though, which is a positive. Awareness is good! Awareness of our own quirks, of our misconceptions, of our tendencies to get in our own way, of who is an asshole and who is not. That’s why it’s okay to be genuine. You show people who you are, and you see who others are in turn. You show people how you feel, they see what they need to see, and you see what you need to see. Doesn’t mean it always feels good in the short term, but in the long run it probably will. There’s a lot to be said for openly committing to a true version of yourself that isn’t and can’t possibly be universally palatable.
Because when you venture out genuinely and find a line—which is hard to do without actually crossing it—you can adjust. Or not. Either way, you keep going and find more lines. And adjust, or not. This is the steady state—moving and tweaking, or moving in place. The choice is ours, if we’re open to it.