Pop culture will often have some dramatic story about letting our true selves shine.
Whether it’s Katie Perry’s song Firework, or countless teen movies & rom coms. Once the nerdy/suppressed protagonist gets over their fears and gain the confidence to really show themselves, everything about their life gets better; they find love, they make friends & they get that job they always dreamed of.
This isn’t entirely accurate.
What these stories should really be saying is, if you showcase yourself in a way that society deems desirable, your life will improve.
I think everyone can imagine a totally untrained pet that shits all through the house, chews up the furniture, barks all night and bites visitors. There are certain behaviours that may be your true self but will lead everyone to find you utterly intolerable to be around.
In humans, these behaviours can be many things such as not cleaning up after yourself when living with others, having an unpleasant communication style, being too attached, being too detached, blowing your money, being too tight with money, being flakey, the list goes on.
This doesn’t even just stop at behaviours, it also extends to interests. Imagine you spend your entire life studying some niche field or spend all of your time thinking about something which to the average person just seems bizarre or arcane? If you diverge too far from the average person, it becomes increasingly difficult to connect with people cos the overlap in what you have to talk about shrinks.
A good example of a place where this idea is really fitting is dating. Do you really think you’ll be able to have a sustained connection with someone if you’re living in entirely different universes?
Life is a balance of stomping to the beat of your own blood pumper and compromise.
If you’re naturally unpleasant to be around or just boring, it’s worthwhile investing some time in becoming more pleasant for others to be around.
There’s a certain degree of filtering you can do so that the people in your life have things in common with you, but at the end up of the day, there will always be compromise unless you want to live utterly alone.
So go consume some pop culture, learn about things which are universally interesting or useful to people like psychology or nutrition and generally house train yourself some. It will make your life easier.