Principle 9: Be True to Yourself

There will always be someone who hates you regardless

I have always had the ability to make friends easily. At various times in my childhood I was the kid who had all the other kids follow him. I was the kind of kid who would walk up to strangers to say hello since the only response I ever knew was one of happy acceptance. What could possibly go wrong?

As an adult I found out.

Such as the time my manager called me into his office to tell me to stop coming to work late. I was startled for in the month-plus I had worked there, I had never once been late. In fact, I had just been thinking to myself a couple of days before how cool it was that I had never been late!

When I asked him why he thought I had been late (and I routinely saw the manager come into the office after I had — so clearly he hadn’t been the one to notice when I got in), he said someone else on my team had reported this to him. Who, I asked? He wouldn’t tell me. I told him it wasn’t true. He didn’t believe me. He believed the liar who informed on me. Our manager/employee relationship was damaged — he thought I was lying about coming in late, and I thought this guy believes a liar over the truth.

To this day I do not know who disliked me so much that he would try to get me fired, but I suspect it was the one guy who had a skill that I also had, and perhaps he was worried I might outshine him? I don’t know.

It was a startling moment for me, as well as later on in life when I found someone who seemed to dislike me from the moment we met, and no matter who much my inner child tried to reach out to this person, they never, ever liked me.

But they couldn’t have based this on my actions since it was an instant reaction!

That’s when an insight hit me: There are a small percentage of people on Earth who will hate you simply because the sight of you reminds them of someone or something they hate.

And there’s not a thing you can do about it, much to the sadness of my inner child.

Being online exposes us to many more people at once, and sure enough, you get people who see your words and just go off!

What can you do? Sure, try to reach out if you think it will help, but at some point you realize you cannot live your life to please others for two reasons:

1. It won’t work. Some people you can never please.

2. You won’t be happy, for you are putting on an act to please them. And see point 1.

So the best way to live your life is to be true to yourself. Act the way you are, and as you wish to be. Let the kind of people who respond to that react to you positively. As for the rest, feel regret if you must, but do not change who you are to please another. It never works in the long run.

P.S. This is dynamite dating advice!