Wearing yourself on your sleeve

I have come to realize the importance of wearing yourself on your sleeve.

There is a large inherent value in being the most authentic version of yourself as frequently as possible. Especially when you meet new people.

Friends

There’s a difference between getting along with someone and being good friends with them.

As you’d expect, the amount of people that we can get along with is much larger than the number that we would ever be good friends with. I would argue that the percentage of people out there that we could be truly good friends with is pretty small.

Taking a step back, I want to define ‘good friend,’ first. I don’t want to get into it too deeply, but will just say a good friend is someone you can meaningfully connect with, be yourself around, have a two-sided relationship with and that you enjoy spending time with. The more time together, connection you have and amount that they know and understand the real you, the closer you are.

All friends are different, and that’s also important to note. You might have someone in your life that you strictly like to party with. When you go out with them you have a ton of fun. Then, you could have someone else that you get a meal with once a week and they make you think really hard. They could both be good friends.

The point I want to make, though, is that your personality, goals, values and interests do not tend to match up with that many other people out there. We are each too unique for that to be the case and we are often so caught up in our bubble that we only let so many people in.

I like to call the people you get along with well and love being around as ‘your people,’ (or for me, ‘my people’).

Finding your people

In order to find your people, you have to be as much of yourself as possible all the time.

You never know when you’ll get introduced to (or meet) someone that you could meaningfully connect with. Under the assumption that there are not many people in that boat, it means you have to take full advantage of the times when you do come across a potentially good friend.

The best way to ensure the chances of a connection is for you to be entirely yourself. If you are a huge music nerd, for example, then talking about music with new people you meet is a great idea. It opens the door for anyone that falls in the same boat to jump in and for a connection to be made.

Similarly, if you love to explore and try new things and travel, then there are plenty of ways to show that when you are around people.

It comes with personality as well

Finding your people goes beyond just your interests. It also relates to your personality. If you are a very quirky person that loves dry humor, then you should act that way all the time. Then, when you meet new people, the ones that vibe with your personality will see you for who you are immediately.

Not to mention the people that might be attracted to a friendship with you.

Plus, the more you act like yourself, the more people you would vibe with will try to enter your life. Think about the people in your life that you do not know particularly well but you have a friend crush on. The reason is that, despite not really knowing the, you like what you see.

Some people take action on those friend crushes and often create meaningful relationships.

If you come across like an asshole on first impression or in larger groups, though, then less people will have these friend crushes on you, and those potential friendships will not be formed.

Keeps negativity out of your life

In addition to the good of being yourself, it also keeps out the bad.

By wearing yourself on your sleeve, it, first off, keeps the wrong people out of your life. If someone is not about the things that make you who you are, then they will not bother to spend much time with you.

As much as we aim to please everyone, that is, in reality, not always the best thing. It means you are wasting time trying to create relationships (and sometimes impress) people whose friendships will never come to full fruition.

You don’t have to suppress anything

Plus, possibly more importantly, when you wear yourself on your sleeve, you can always be yourself.

If you are an introverted person that actually can’t handle being around others for extended amounts of time, but you are loud and crack jokes and try to control the crowd whenever you meet new people, then you are putting yourself in a bad spot.

Even if being loud and funny helps you make friends initially, those friends are built on an unstable foundation. Especially if loud, joke-cracking you is not the real you.

Then, you have to keep up the facade or risk being seen as a different person.

Having to keep up the facade is exhausting. It means you cannot be yourself. You might have to suppress certain traits or characteristics that you have, which sucks.

The more you do not wear yourself on your sleeve, the more you are acting like a different person. That drains your energy as opposed to building it up through actions and decisions you enjoy.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t be self-critical at times

This is an important caveat.

There are certain positive traits that you might know about yourself that you can articulate. “I love music.” “I love dry humor.” “I care about the environment.”

Those are great traits to wear on your sleeve because they make up great parts about you.

Other negative traits, though, can be worked on. If you are someone who gets easily angry, this isn’t to say that you have to always put on a fake face when you’re upset. Rather, it is to say that you should not take your anger as a given. If you carry that anger with you everywhere, even if it is true to your character, it is not true to the best version of yourself.

It can be challenging to draw those lines between traits or characteristics that you are happy with and that you want to change. In my opinion, we should always be open to changing, especially if change will bring about a heightened state of presence, vividness and enjoyment of the world around us. There is a difficult balance to be struck between working on improving in certain areas and just being yourself at your very core. Not something to expand on here, but maybe in a future article.

Wearing those traits that make you who you are, though, in general, is an extremely positive habit to form. People will love you for who you are :) just have to find those people.