"Working on yourself" and why it won't get you what you want.

It has been said that there is no “us” without “me”, and to a certain extent, this is true. What does it mean to be yourself? People do not exist in a vacuum, and our existence is always in relation to the people around us in our life. That is how your identity is formed: by negotiating, acting, and counteracting, until you have established what your role is within the family, the community locally, and the community at large. Have you ever noticed that you act differently in different friend groups that you have? This is normal. One group of friends that like to do one thing have that thing in common and your other groups of friends know you through a lens according to what the goals are of that group. Your hiking friends are going to be different from your gaming friends. You will speak to your parents differently than your boss. That is because your identity is different in each of those social settings. You are still you, but depending on the clique that you are in will determine how you act and how you think.

The Disney movie series, High School Musical, has this idea as a central theme. The basketball jock can't join the musical, what would his coach think? How would his other jock friends react? The main character, Troy Bolton, has already negotiated with everyone around him what his role is, and what his identity is within the confines of the school.

Branching out can cause growing pains. These growing pains, however, are useful and can increase your personal capacity and can give you a new and better social circle that can help you expand your identity. One of my best friends decided to go skydiving last year, and he said it changed his life. He claims it helped him face his fear of pretty much everything. Now he works in sales and this former “shy guy” talks to almost 100 people a day. I felt a similar experience when I branched out and joined my high school lacrosse team. I found out that there's a sport out there I love and that I can think differently when my body is moving. Both experiences have resulted in changing social environments and meeting new people because of it. I feel like I have grown a ton since that first day on the practice field trying to figure out the game. People polish people and growth in life is about being more polished than you were yesterday. Now, extreme sports and dumping rubber balls into goals are great experiences and can help define our identity but, searching for and finding your lifelong partner is 10 times better than any calisthenic exercise or adrenaline rush.

So why is it that dating has become so hard these days? Instead, people prefer to “hang out” or just not search at all. One of the most common phrases I hear is “I am just working on myself right now.” But how is that possible? It sounds to me like setting the goal to swim the English Channel and then spending none of your time in the water. What appears to be happening is people “working on themselves” never finish, and it does not seem to make anyone happy. The solution is this: embrace those growing pains, seek out what you want, and be happy with it.

One of my favorite songs is called 100 Bad Days by a band named AJR. In this song, it talks about how “100 bad days make 100 good stories, and 100 good stories make [you] interesting at parties”. If you truly want to work on yourself, you need to go out and do stuff, interact with people, and maybe fall down. If you truly want to find someone that you are compatible with, you need to have a few (or a lot) of awkward dates, get rejected, or maybe put your fear in the back seat to the vision of a happy future.

That is the kicker. Would you rather be lonely and not have gone through the pain of some clumsy social interactions, or be in happy relationships based on love and trust and have some funny stories to tell along the way? I believe that if you truly ponder what it is that you want what you will keep circling back to is a fulfilling life with three pillars: engaging work, a loving spouse and kids, and giving back to your community in the form of service. There is no “us” without “me” but also there is no “us” if you never carve out space for “us”, so do your future self a favor and try. You will be happier in the end.