“Be yourself” is common advice. The ode to authenticity.
“Change yourself” is also common advice. The ode to personal growth.
My reconciliation? Love yourself is what should be the baseline. Self-love is the foundation. And then, from that bedrock of confidence, embrace the dynamism of change yourself.
But “change yourself” doesn’t just mean to do so in a macroscopic, grand “I will pursue higher virtue and wisdom in the years ahead” kind of way.
It also means to be adaptive and changing at the day-to-day level, especially in your micro interactions with other people.
See, folks who are merely “average” at interpersonal connection embrace “just be yourself” and hope their authenticity will attract people to them and serve as the basis for connection.
I notice people gifted at interpersonal connection instead adapt themselves to their conversation partner. They emphasize different parts of themselves. They read the other person’s pressure points, insecurities, desires.
The “basic” game is to truly listen to your conversational partner as he or she bobs and floats and tilts in the waves of conversation. You must assiduously stay present.
Conversations in the professional world wilt when one person fails to practice basic listening. Sarah mentions she’s overwhelmed with her new project responsibilities, her voice tight with stress. Instead of acknowledging this, Mike immediately launches into his own exciting news about a promotion. Sarah withdraws; Mike wonders why she seems distant.
In an age of tech distractions and continuous partial attention, staying present to hear the other person, and then say things in response, is actually a differentiated skill.
The “advanced” game is to be a fluid status player in how you project energy. If the person you’re talking to is dominant and expects submissive energy, then you should either channel submissiveness in return or be cognizant of sensitives that can emerge if you choose to match their dominance. As a friend recently put it, “The master of interaction can switch between dominant and submissive energy effortlessly.”
This is interpersonal 4D chess: recognizing energy patterns and status needs. Say Mike projects dominance and expects submission. If Sarah directs dominance back, tension emerges.
What counts as “dominant” or “submissive” energy is subtle. For example, you might think asking questions of another person is a way to convey submission whereas expressing declarative statements conveys dominance. Sometimes that’s so: I have questions, you have answers, I signal submission when I ask you questions. But question-asking can also, depending on how it’s done and in what context, be an expression as dominance. It’s often about tone more than words; context more than content.
In sum, the theory is:
1) Your “authentic self” contains multitudes, and cannot be be singularly distilled. “Just be yourself” is an unhelpful starting premise to guide the way you relate to others.
2) Long run personal change to deepen your capacity for deep connection is powerful but… takes a long time.
3) The key rests in day-to-day adaptiveness in the micro interactions with the people you’re relating to. Conversational presence is a good start. Fluidly shifting status and power dynamics is the advanced game.
(Thanks to Sasha Chapin for helping brainstorm this.)
Hmmm. Some of the most “gifted at interpersonal connection” people I know are pathological liars. I’ve often found when dealing with such people that if I respond in my usual way of total in-the-moment honesty, even, or maybe especially, if it’s to my own detriment, that it seems to short their circuitry and I can see in their eyes that they’re thinking: “What is his game?” Then I have the advantage.;-) On the other hand, in such “total honesty” moments it’s often my unconscious answering, and it knows everything, so sometimes I get an explosive reaction because I’ve just touched a very sensitive nerve, which the unconscious self zeroes in on with unerring accuracy. Really, I’m lucky to be alive.;-)
Great to hear from you, Vince!
Good to see you’re still keepin’ on keepin’ on, Ben. Hadn’t fired up my feed reader in a while and had to reply when I saw this post. I’m glad many of the old favorite blogs are still going strong, in spite of Substack publishing (of which I read my fair share, but on the free tier.;-)