Hey friendos. "Just be yourself" doesn't mean just keep on being exactly as the miserable piece of shit you are. It means you shouldn't put up a facade in order to convince someone you're a person you actually aren't, because that's doomed to fail.
It doesn't excuse you from the necessity of genuine effort towards personal development. Self-growth isn't just a goal to achieve that you're set once you're there, but an ongoing state of mind you have to maintain.
You have to be yourself, but if you're a terrible person and you know it, you need to work towards making who you really are a better self. It's not easy for people currently trapped in debilitating thought patterns, but it can be done, even if you can't completely escape the thought patterns themselves.
Accept the things you can't change, and change the things you can - which are much more plentiful than your current state of mind or the the toxic environment you're in will have you believe.
that's what i've been saying; 'b ursef' is a nice way of saying 'stop trying'
That's one way to be yourself but don't be yourself. I don't even think normies know what they're saying nowadays.
>>28527242
>You have to be yourself, but if you're a terrible person and you know it, you need to work towards making who you really are a better self
But how is being a weird , socially awkward miserable dude not "myself"? That is what I grew up to be for years
>>28527596
It's not a contradictory principle - your current state of self is always transient, not some fixed entity. It may not be ready to connect with other people the way you want it to, but it can be.
It's just that you have to get there through self-growth rather than pretending you're someone you're not. Your feeling of being trapped and hopeless is the illusion to overcome, not the possibility of success. That's not to say it's a trivial thing to do, and like anything else worthwhile, you'll likely fail a lot before you succeed.
I hope your mother gets gang raped by a pack of wild niggers
>>28527242
the person that I am isn't someone who pursues self-growth, nor is he someone who feels good when he does it anyway, is the thing. You're saying "be yourself, but only if 'yourself' has the normie traits of ambition and pride in accomplishment"
>>28527808
It is yourself, and there's nothing wrong with being that. Those don't make you a terrible person - an example of a terrible trait is someone who directs bitterness towards other people because of their misery. You can see a lot of this around here.
There are plenty of weird, socially awkward and miserable people in the world with people who love them, and plenty of people who become less socially awkward and miserable over time, including many who don't start finding their way to work through their difficulties well into adulthood. These don't have to be your all-consuming definitive traits, nor do they have to be permanent attributes.
Of course, there's no need for or point to striving to be less 'weird'. There are lots of weird people, and it's better to just build your real connections with them.
Self-development isn't just for people of with deficiencies of character, either. Continually improving your understanding of the truth will help lead to less misery. People who think they're 'redpilled' and have it all figured out and hate everyone around them have actually just completely deluded themselves about the nature of people and reality.
>>28527989
An openness to change aspects of yourself when you see the flaws in them is a great attribute to have in yourself. You may not have this attribute and may never have had it, but that just means you're predicating too much of your self on your past selves, not that it can't ever change for future selves.
Great developments of self are often catalyzed through being exposed to and comprehending the implications of a new truth, rather than generated through the same old thought patterns of the existing parts of your personality.
>>28527242
Is it really possible to stop being a shit person though? I prefer "fake it till you make it", and though I'm still waiting on the "make it" part, it's working just fine.
>>28528267
I don't really understand your post, especially the second part.
Yeah, I see a bunch of flaws in myself, but I don't feel motivated to change them, because remedying my flaws for the sake of being a better person doesn't motivate me at all, and remedying my flaws for the sake of getting something, like money or a gf, motivates me only weakly. Certainly more weakly than most normies. On a few occasions, I've tried it anyway. I started working out and kept it up for a few months.I was in noticeably better shape, lost weight, etc. I gather this was supposed to make me feel good, because it was progress towards self-improvement. It didn't. I hated every minute of it, and, despite the fact that I could see improvement, felt "why am I bothering? What's the point of this?" Same kind of thing happened with other self-improvement tasks, like going to college and getting a job, which I also did for a while.
The thing that I'm saying that I want your rebuttal to is that it seems like you're assuming that people innately feel good from self-improvement, if only they try it and see progress. So you're saying I shouldn't put up a facade to convince people that my personality is something that its not, but then in the next sentence you say that you have to show particular personality traits - feeling proud of accomplishment and self-improvement for self-improvement's sake. If I don't innately feel those things, what choice do I have but to put up a fake screen and pretend that I do?
>>28527242
I won't, but thanks for recognizing that I'm not just a friendly, likeable person stuck behind anxiety.
