The importance of being you...

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In this community there is a lot of advice out there, on social skills... meeting people, overcoming your personal foibles in order to be accepted and have friends. Though this may sound like me being a broken record, and spouting out tired cliches, I think it is important to remind people that the most vital thing about being accepted and liked by others is to simply be yourself.

You may think that part of being yourself is awkward, or shy, or nervous, or inexperienced, or unliked... and those are aspects of yoursef, but not you. I feel like i've made huge developments personally, but part of me is still horribly shy, still nervous, still overtly literal, still awkward in huge groups of people, still everything that I felt was holding me back, but inside everyone of us there is a higher self, a self that is unrestrained by our personal drama and negative internal dialogue. This is a self that is you in its purest form, that by sheer virtue of being it will attract people to it, and be liked, and respected, and loved.

Getting there is the hard part, because just as we are all different, our paths go in different directions. I am not saying that one should try to change who you are, or ignore who you are... but to embrace who you are, because people will only treat us as well as we treat ourselves. Embrace what you love about yourself and about your life and attempt to expand yourself as an individual, these are the only ways that we will grow and learn about ourselves. There will be times while on this path of self-acceptance, and self-love that you will doubt whether or not it is the right thing to do, but if you are determined, keep at it and the universe will give you a sign that you are doing perfectly fine.

So for everyone, it's possible. It's not easy, but it's entirely possible. It may take years, and there are many false starts and points of stagnation, and it may not feel like anything is happening, but that's only because those feelings are the last thing to go.

Embrace yourself, love yourself, and all of your other foibles will eventually come into check.

I agree that being yourself is important, but there's no harm in learning a few skills to help you get by.
If embracing & loving yourself really does make everything come into check, it would have worked for me throughout the 14 years I tried it. I guess it's not for everyone.

I'm not saying that it's not important. Far from it, it's very important, but even over the years since i've started learning all of these "social skills" they haven't really made any difference in my life, especially social life, until I obtained the confidence and self-love that was needed to utilize them properly. You can spend a years learning how to play an instrument, but until you have the confidence in your abilities... it's always going to sound a little off.

I agree but even when you accept yourself there will still be people out there who wont accept you. I see that you are a Black Man, and so am I. we both have asperger's. Ther will be people who wont accept us because we are black. Or other things about is. But the majority of people will.

LOl I'm not trying to steal the thread, but:

We shouldnt work on accpting ourselves just to be accepted by others, we should accept ourselves to be happy. The whole world can dislike you and you can still like yourself its possible. But we are all humans and stuff get to us. Think about President Bush. Most of the country didnt like him, but he didnt seem to care, but after a while he began to drink because h's hum, and things get to us. Just because something gets to you once, doesnt mean you should let it get you down. and you shouldnt look for outside acceptance by accepting yourself, you should accept yourself to be happy, even if everyone sle in the world hates you.
Even people like serial killers have the right to love themselves, just because someone doesnt like them doesnt mean they should get down and cry. They are people too, and they should love themselves just asmuch as everyone else loves themselves, even if they did do something wrong.

I'm totally not saying love yourself to get other people to like you. Loving yourself is it's own rewards, and after you do it's not going to matter whether people will like you or not, BUT when you do love yourself... it does attract people to you. Having self-confidence is always in of itself an attractor, but it's a bonus... not a goal.

This is an epiphany that comes after years of continually trying to be something that I was not, trying to love a part of me that wasn't real... in the false hopes that it would in fact bring people to me... and instead it drove people further away. Then realizing that there is by and large going to be a very large contingent of people that aren't going to like me no matter what "social skills" I recite or how normal I pretend to be. So I turned my attention inward, instead of focusing on what would make others happy I focused on what would make me happy. Do things that I would enjoy, learn things that I want to learn... learning to be me essentially. Making the best and most just decisions given my circumstances and my goals and my values, and doing my best to ignore my anxieties and my inner bullcrap because that is just a negative tape that is being replayed in your head, that doesn't neccessarily represent reality.

In this I am learning how to love myself, by being myself, and by loving myself. It feels good, it feels really good. I go out now, and instead of doing what I think everyone wants to do, I do what I feel is right, dancing the way I want to dance and socializing the way I want to socialize. If people turn me down, it doesn't matter... but most of the time they don't. They accept me for who I am, because first I had to accept me, and love me for who I was.

Yup exactly. That's what im working on too. Ay, do you have trouble with women?

A bit. Then again, a lot of it is not the fact that women don't like me, but that i'm too dense to realize. Also, I don't think a relationship is something I want right now, so the universe isn't throwing the opportunities of a good one in my direction. I'm SO not in a relationship place, i'm more in a... randomly make out with women at clubs/concerts kind of place.

It's much easier when others around you accept your quirks.

Finding your true self and celebrating it when you're on your own is wonderful.

However, you can't be totally yourself in society. That's indeed a cliche, and an untruth. The very essence of relating is about a constant compromise between who you are in your purest form and who you have to be in order to fit in with others. If, say, your essence loves art, but you happen to be sharing some time for some reason with people who feel threatened by art appreciating people (let's say your fiance's folks), you'll have to tone it down to the point of not even mentioning art when you're around them, even if art is the center of your life. Not to mention that you shouldn't try to be yourself with your boss, your alpha colleagues, your doctor, your bank manager, your recruiting agent when you're unemployed, your landlord, your business contacts, your customers, etc. etc. etc. etc.

For an Aspie, unless you're extremely rich and therefore above everyone else in society, "be yourself" is the most dangerous advice. NTs don't like one bit our pure essence.