- Just be yourself has
become sort of a statement that people venerate these days. People celebrate just be yourself, probably because it kinda
feels like a warm hug. Just be yourself and
everything's gonna be okay. It feels kind of
empathetic, understanding. It's like, yeah, you're right. I can just be myself. That sounds fantastic. I don't have to be anything that I'm not. Just be yourself feels like
it really cares about you, despite the fact that nobody
really follows that advice because you can't really follow it. Everybody is a chameleon of sorts. When you're around the boys having a beer, you're gonna act way differently than you do when you're around your mom. When you're at a job interview, you're going to be all
proper and professional and maybe a little bit personable, way more charming than you would if you're just relaxing on the couch devolving into degeneracy, trying to watch something on Netflix. We do this because we kind of have to. Different situations that we're in recruit different parts
of us, different emphases. Sometimes we have to be professional, other times we have to be
very charming and funny like I'm doing right now. I'm not like this in real life, but I've gotta film a Better Ideas video so I sound super smart and
personable and relatable. The point I'm trying to make is that are we ever really ourselves? What does it mean to be ourselves? And is it something that
we should strive to be? Because just be yourself has become something that we've been conditioned
to believe is true based on repetition. Maybe the Walt Disney company got us all believing that
we should just be ourselves, make our dreams come true, follow our heart, find our passion. All of these bubblegum, cotton candy, birthday card sentiments that all sound very comforting but don't really mean anything and are impossible to
just apply to your life. We hear these things so often, they've become utterly meaningless. Nobody's life was ever changed by somebody saying to them, "Hey, "just follow your dreams." What does that mean? I've had some pretty
(beep) up dreams in my day. And if we were to follow those dreams, we would all be screwed. God help us all. And follow your passion, most people that you talk to have no idea what their passion is. They have things they're interested in, probably a bunch of things
they're interested in, but there's a lot of pressure in like, oh, find your passion and
everything's gonna work out. There's a lot of pressure in that because people get analysis paralysis. They have no idea which passion to pick. What's gonna be the one thing that makes everything make sense? And again, I think that we tend to agree with these taglines, not because they're
particularly instructional, but because they sound
like they mean well. They're very easy to swallow. It's never challenging or uncomfortable to believe that the answer
to all of our problems is to just be more of ourselves, whatever that means. But I think that just being yourself is inherently a defeatist statement because just implies that
yourself is something to just be. It's a reality to regress back to. It tells you to stop
reaching and stop pursuing and just be you because you're just you. It's an inherently pessimistic statement veiled in self-congratulation. A statement that doesn't
want the best for you, a statement that doesn't
care about your ideals, your conception of a brighter future. It's a statement that
encourages you to stop growing. But riddle me this, why just be yourself when
you can be so much more? Now you might think to yourself, well, I can only just be myself, right? If I'm always striving
to be more than myself then I will never feel okay with myself. I'll never feel comforted. I'll never feel okay with who I am, and instead I will hold this
future version of myself in front of me like a carrot to a mule, hamster wheeling myself, I guess mule wheeling yourself
right into your grave. You'll never be able to
stop and smell the roses. You'll always be looking
for the next thing. Goals and goals and goals. And you'll be searching for a peace that you could find in the present moment. And while I understand this argument, I also think it's very shortsighted. It doesn't take into account the bigger picture of the human brain, and that is that, yes, we do need to feel satisfied
and happy with what we have. That's what serotonin and
oxytocin and endorphins are for. They're all for feeling
good in the present moment. It's a very important
system of our psychology, but potentially way more influential and important for our survival is our dopamine system. And dopamine is all about motivation. If somebody were to
delete all the dopamine in your brain right now so you couldn't feel a lick of dopamine, you would lay down in whatever
chair you're sitting on because you'd probably not
have the motivation to sit down and you would never lift
a finger to do anything. You would pee your pants because you wouldn't be
motivated to go to the bathroom. You wouldn't get up to eat anything. You would literally lay there and die. We need motivation to go get things that
we don't already have. It's the only reason why
you're alive right now. So in a way, motivation is the desire to attain something that
we don't already have. It's something that requires
us to move in space and time to go get, and that will never go away, right? We will always be
motivated to do something. The question is, what are we
locking our motivation into? Is it Netflix? Is it social media? Is it buying frivolous things? No judgment, I'm just saying that it's
locked into something. So since we have this profound desire to achieve things that we
haven't already achieved or to get things that
we don't already have, what better thing is there to lock our motivation system into than being the best version of ourselves so that that we can be
more capable people, capable of helping ourselves get through the hardships of life so that we can help others get through the hardships in their lives, essentially making the
world a better place through being the best we can be. So I think that two things
can be true at the same time. We can both strive for greatness and be the best that we can be, not settling for just being ourselves. But at the same time, having honesty and compassion
for wherever we are now. But a lot of the time, we have very weird
tendencies and behaviors that we think are just
a part of who we are, but in fact they are behaviors that we learned through trauma or the role that we played in our friends group or our family that lead us to do things
that don't actually serve us, they don't serve others. And all in all, they're just a negative. Even though it's like,
oh, that's just me, ha-ha, you'd be surprised how many aspects of your
personality are improvable. You might think that it's just a little quirk
or insanity that you have, but consider the fact
that you can improve it. You can modify your behavior
and your thought patterns to better serve you. And things that you previously thought were just part of your
personality or you being you are things that are just a result of the way you are brought up and things that don't actually
help you in the long run. Don't get self-compassion
confused with complacency. For instance, if you had a close friend and he kind of went off the deep end, previously you were really good friends, you got along, and then he started to
become kind of toxic. He started pushing you and others away through his behaviors, through his words. And you're kinda like, what gives? This guy has changed and I don't know if I wanna
be around him anymore, but I do really care about him. But for now, I have to distance myself. If this person were to come
up to you sincerely and say, "Hey, look, I realize my
behavior was out of line. "I didn't really realize it at the time, "but it's become clear to
me that I need to change. "My words and my actions are
hurting me or hurting others "and I'm ready to change." Would you say, "No, it's okay. "Just be yourself. "You do you." You would probably say, "I agree. "Your behavior was out of line. "I'm so glad that you can see that. "And since I care about you, "I really want to help you be
the best version of yourself "so that you can serve yourself better "and get along with everybody," right? I want you to be the best you can be. And it's funny because loving that person isn't just permitting
them to do their thing and be who they are and whatever, that's complacency. Since you care about that person, you want to help them be the
best version of themselves. I truly believe that we need
to treat ourselves like this. We need to treat ourselves
like we have inherent dignity, like we are on our own side and we want the best for ourselves. And a lot of the time, we don't treat ourselves with
the dignity that we deserve. Our behaviors and our actions or maybe habits or ways of thinking or thought patterns that we have, that we've had since the dawn of time, as long as we can remember, are proving with time to not serve us, to be destructive. Maybe we learned these
tendencies through childhood and they're just a part of who we are, but they're leading us
to the brink of doom. We gain no traction in our lives. Nothing's working, should
we just be ourselves then? So ask yourself, are you living a life that
reflects your inherent dignity? Are your thoughts, behaviors
and habits serving you? Who do you ideally want to be? And what can you do to help you
become somebody of strength? And the bizarre thing is when we start caring
more about our future, when we have ideals, when we have something to strive towards, we actually start to become more satisfied with the present moment. And especially when
you've been on that path for a little while, you can look to your past and you have a track record of growth. You can be comforted that
you've come a long way, and you can be excited and motivated by the person that you're becoming. Self-satisfaction can't exist in a vacuum. It's impossible to shake our concept of the true, the good and the beautiful. So maybe the answer to life
isn't to just be yourself. Maybe the answer is to
love yourself enough to become something more. A big thank you to Athletic Greens for sponsoring this video. You guys know that AG1 is by
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body and mental dominance. And thank you Athletic Greens
for sponsoring this video. If you liked this video then
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