Personal Change vs. Being Yourself

Posted on | September 7, 2010 | 227 Comments

One of the most misinterpreted sayings I have been hearing frequently is something along the lines of: “I want someone who is going to accept me/love me for WHO I AM.”

The Real Meaning

A person should love & appreciate you for who you are—your true authentic self. You should be living in alignment with you are, following your passions and being true to yourself and others. If you are doing this, whoever you choose to align yourself with should accept you for that or should not be in your life.

The Misinterpretation

Quality people typically have standards for what is acceptable behavior and what they will tolerate from the people they have in their lives. Wanting to be accepted for ‘who you are’ should not give you an excuse to continue living life in a crappy way. Some examples include but are not limited to: constant negativity & a negative view of the world, excessive anger/trust/jealousy issues, depression, drug addiction, etc. Having any of the above issues are layers covering up your true authentic self and everything good about you. Those layers are detrimental to both yourself and other people. It is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to fix yourself & make whatever necessary deep level changes you need. Take the time to invest in yourself and get your problems handled. (There are many different approaches besides a psychologist to helping yourself in this respect and I will cover that in a future post.) If you are living like a complete train wreck, you should not expect others, especially people who have their life together to treat you like gold when you don’t deserve it.

The Quest to Change

No one is perfect and everyone has their flaws (some bigger & many more than others) but it does not mean you should not strive to become a better person. It is not about changing who you are, it is about removing layers of “who you aren’t” so that “who you truly are” can shine through more brightly. Personal change should be constantly occurring in a person whether it results from maturity and learning from experience or consciously making an effort to improve themselves.