The advice to "just be yourself" keeps you lonely because most people have never found an authentic self, only a safe performance. A coach helped an anxious client by encouraging him to play different characters instead. Within nine days, he met a partner and moved continents.
'Just be yourself' is some of the laziest advice ever given to people. And it's usually said by people who've actually never built their true love, freedom, or calling just by being themselves. And turns out, it actually does way more harm than good. How do I know? Because over the last 17 years, I've walked up to thousands of people across 30 countries, trying to figure out which myself I was supposed to be. Is it the Korean son, the UC Berkeley graduate, the American Goldman Sachs investment banker, or the nomad who never really belonged anywhere? Which is it? But turns out I was asking the wrong question. So here's a real issue: most people have no idea who they are yet.
Why?
Because They're trained to perform, not to express. School, perform. Career, perform. Family, behave. Don't mess it up. And suddenly in dating, they're told, "Hey, relax. Just be yourself." You see the fallacy here? This advice assumes you're already free. Now, what most people call themselves is just their safest version, the version that avoids judgment, that avoids rejection, that avoids tension. That's not authenticity. That's conditioning. And if you're multicultural, third culture like me, you've code-switched so many times that there was— you forgot that there was even a choice. So telling someone who's shut down, anxious, overly controlled to just be themselves, it doesn't free them. It traps them. Let me make this real. One of my clients, before we started working together, made a lot of money, extremely high achieving, location freedom. When you look at him, charismatic, good-looking, active social life, seemingly nothing wrong. But when it comes to approaching women in this context where he's out and about, see someone beautiful walk by and actually putting himself out there, he was so crippled with anxiety that he was having suicidal thoughts because he's got this of being seen, being judged, being rejected, and he didn't know what to do. Everywhere he looked, everyone else was telling him exactly the same thing. Just be yourself. So when we started working together, I didn't tell him to be himself. Quick back side story. I like playing around with different accents. Pharmacy? You've got to be kidding me. Hey, where are you from? I thought you were from China. I found out that he actually really, really started having fun with it to the point where he started mimicking You look like you give good recommendation for, uh, cafe. And I found out that, okay, he actually— his energy, his whole vibe was getting uplifted whenever he was having a lot of fun in this context. Instead of me just telling him, hey, you just got to be yourself, right, putting pressure on him, we actually completely switched the context to one where, okay, now you have freedom to play around with these different characters. I give you permission to actually be this guy with an Indian accent. I thought that you are very pretty, so I wanted to say hi to you. French accent, Italian. The main point here is not that you need to have these different accents, but actually he gave himself this permission to be someone else, to actually play a brand new character that happens to be an extension of himself. Instead of him thinking that he needs to be this cool macho guy, "Ooh, I'm like a good-looking guy," that's when magic happened. On day 9 of our coaching, he actually met a woman who happened to be just completely aligned on every aspect, that he actually moved from Europe to Asia to start building his relationship with her. Now the core lesson here, we didn't focus on, hey, just be yourself. Just do a lot of reflection and understand what your real self is. Just remove that mask, remove that performance. No, we actually gave him that new character. We allowed him to access parts of himself that he didn't even know were there until he actually started experimenting. With this whole vibe. So this is the part that no one tells you. You don't find yourself, you build yourself through expression, through action, through feedback from reality. Just as the story I just told you about my client, when it comes to finding what he was really looking for, he actually found it not by just reflecting on himself, just trying to be himself, but by freeing himself. Identity doesn't come first, expression does. So no, don't be yourself, free yourself. Strip away the performance, strip away the fear, and what's left is someone worth becoming. As we wrap up the video, I see this girl over there, so let's go, let's go, let's do this, uh, live. Hey, excuse me. Yes? Sorry, I just saw you. You look nice, so I wanted to come say hello.
Oh, hi.
Hi, what's your name?
Mint.
So you're minty? Would you say you're like minty? Yeah. Yeah? You have like, you're fresh.
Yeah, something like that.
You look like super, like your outfit is so like you're ready to, I don't know, like tear something up, you know?
After I run, maybe I have a coffee with my friends.
Yeah? Okay, amazing. What's your Instagram, by the way? Okay, I give you. Let me give you my Instagram. You can add me.
There you go.
Okay, see you. Nice to meet you. Bye-bye. This is literally the definition of freeing yourself. I was actually shooting content. Okay, when I see someone that catches my eye, catches my vibe, let me go actually express myself, right? It's not about your identity because your identity is in flux. It's always changing. You know, you're here to evolve. And how do you actually make sure that you evolve through expression. So that's the vibe. Keep calm and vibe on.
Peace.
