“If you want success in whatever industry you are in — obviously find ways to hack it — but by being truly authentic, you do not have to gravitate to the world. The world will gravitate to you.”
— Andrew Schulz
It seems everybody’s talking authenticity.
“Just be yourself. That’s how I got successful.”
Only one problem:
You don’t hear the failures talking about the value of being authentic.
“Yeah man, I’m such a dull, needy, badly dressed guy… and judgmental and sexually timid to boot… but my dating life has NEVER been better. Since I really started to be my authentic, value-sucking self, girls are blowing up my phone each night, asking me to come over and play Mario Kart.”
It just doesn’t happen.
I think the reason why is obvious:
Authenticity only works if you are attractive. Or if you can write winning sales letters. Or whatever the criterion of success is in your field. An authentic potato is still a potato.
But contrary to what you might think, my point is not to rag on authenticity and suggest you should hate yourself or deny your inner drives and instincts.
I just think this talk about authenticity brings up a much bigger and more interesting issue.
And that’s that there are certain questions without a simple, straightforward answer.
So the question of, “How do you get successful?” has a two-part, contradictory answer.
1) Sometimes you gotta trust your gut and be yourself (authenticity).
2) Other times, you need to go against your instincts and respond to external feedback (self-improvement).
When should you do 1 and when should you do 2? Well, that’s where it gets tricky.
This two-sided, yin-yang, beans-and-rice duality explains (to my mind at least) why we haven’t been able to conclusively answer some seemingly simple questions, even though smart people have been racking their brains on them for thousands of years.
In politics. In personal relations. In simple topics such as happiness and how you should live your life.
But anyways, maybe I’m getting too philosophical. I just wanted to point out that people love simple answers, and if you accept that sometimes there are no simple answers, you can actually save yourself a lot of grief and maybe even make better progress than if you continue to dig a deeper hole.
And with that, I’m signing off.
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And if you need entertainment for the moment, I can recommend going on YouTube and checking out a few minutes of Andrew Schulz’s comedy. He’s very authentic and he’s very funny, if you can get past his jackass stage persona.