Most people have already made you out to be who they want you to be in their minds.
“Authenticity is critical because most people have already painted you to be who they want you to be, anyway.
They perceive a truth about you & then frame up a fixed, misguided narrative, disallowing you to evolve in their minds.
In reality, it’s them who never evolve.”
-Ray Zingler on X
We’ve all heard the phrases, “they are going to love you or hate you either way, so you may as well be you” and “It’s better to be disliked for who you are than liked for who you’re not.”
And those phrases are 100% true, but most people don’t live those truths.
They walk through life on this tight rope trying to balance both sides of the fence in an effort to be all things to all people. Anything they can do to (attempt to) not ruffle any feathers.
Their goals are to be “generally liked” by most people.
But what they don’t understand is that in their quest to be liked by all they wash out any real personality, creativity, and really a sense of potential significance.
The people you’re suppressing your authenticity for don’t even care about you anyway.
If I have learned anything about people in my time writing and creating content & publicly sharing myself on the internet and in real life every day, it’s this:
Most people are going to paint the picture of who they want you to be in their own heads despite their being any real validity to their manufactured avatar.
They will formulate assessments based on severely limited perspectives and often cherry pick your body of work to hold you to the image they’ve created of you in their heads.
You’ll notice how people won’t say anything and then once you say something that strikes a nerve (often a misunderstanding of context) they hold you to that image forever.
The reason they frame up this fixed, misguided narrative and “disallow” you to evolve in their own minds is because they are using you, the person unafraid to put their authentic selves out there, to shield themselves from acknowledging their own flaws.
In reality it’s not you, the authentic being who isn’t evolving, it’s them.
They think they “look better” outwardly because they hide their cards.
But the real courageous one is you, who is putting yourself out there, flaws and all, sharing yourself with others, & subjecting yourself to criticism & judgement.
Be unapologetically you.
Your confidence will increase.
You’ll impact the right people.
And you’ll evolve as a person.
All while they stay stagnant & judge you from the sidelines.
