By Till H. Groß
“What’s up, bro? How’s everything going?”, my friend asked me who I haven’t seen for years. “I’m great. I’m doing a lot of public speaking right now and I make a ton of money with that.” I replied.
A few hours later another friend called me and wanted to hang out. He asked me the same question “How are you man? How’s life treating you?”. I replied “It’s going great. Doing lots of public speaking right now, that allows me to travel so much. It’s awesome.”
Later that night I was having dinner with my mom and since we haven’t really talked in quite a while she asked me as well “How are you? How is everything going?” And once again a different answer to the same question “I’m doing great. I did a lot of public speaking recently. I love it because I can help a lot of people.”
Can you see what I did here?
Well…I can see it now. However, it took me years to notice it. I tried to adjust each of my replies in such a way that it would match the values of the other person. I wouldn’t lie or make things up, but simply highlight the things I knew the other person cared about.
My friend who I grew up with is immensely impressed by people who make a lot of money, so I highlighted that part. My other friend loves travelling, so I focused on that. My mom cares about neither of these things but being a good person is something that’s important to her, so I told her that I’m helping a lot of people.
That’s something I would do on a regular basis. Instead of honestly saying why I care about the work that I do, I tried to live up to the standards of the other person. I simply reacted to my environment.
Now, this doesn’t have to be a problem at all. Doing this is a great way to easily build rapport with people and show them in a non-obvious way that you understand their world and what they care about. In the past this allowed me to easily make friends in the most diverse environments.
However trying to constantly live up to the values of others, even though it can be helpful in the short run, can have pretty severe long-term consequences. At best, you seem inauthentic or fake, promoting things you don’t care about or trying to emulate another person’s behavior, and at worst you will lose yourself in the expectations of others, hunting for validation.
To lose yourself sounds kinda esoteric, but that’s essentially what it is, you lose sight of what you really care about and you end up compromising what matters most to you in the attempt to fit in.
Here’s a cheesy example…
A while ago my wife made me watch Mean Girls. If you haven’t watched it, don’t bother. Even though I’m still mad at her for making me sit through the movie, it’s full of examples of people who compromise on their values to be accepted by others.
The main character, Cady, arrives at a new school. She’s lonely and hopes to fit in somewhere, going from lunch table to lunch table on her first day. So, when the A-list clique “The Plastics” offer her a chance to join the cool table she gladly accepts. However, everything goes downhill from there. In an attempt to fit in with her new “friends” she begins wearing makeup and pink clothes even though she dislikes it. She is really good at math. But in order to get with a guy she pretends to be stupid, gets failing grades and doesn’t join the math team. This escalates and not much later she doesn’t invite her real friends to a party and writes mean things about other people into the secret book of her clique.
After all the movie has an happy end. The different characters actually figure out who they want to be and instead of just trying to be “cool” they pursue what they care about. Cady wins a math contest, the leader of the “Plastics” joins the lacrosse team and the other “Plastics” also own their individual interests.
Obviously it’s a movie and the examples are kind of extreme, however I am sure that all of us have done things we usually wouldn’t do to or said yes to things we would usually say no to, just to be accepted by others.
Next to the examples at the beginning where I would focus on different benefits of my job, I remember being in high-school and I would go out of my way to hide the fact that I’m reading books in my spare time, because it was simply not cool.
That’s because during our teenage years our personalities are fickle and we cling on to whatever makes us look cool or grants acceptance or respect from the other kids. Compromising the things that we care about isn’t necessarily healthy, but completely normal during our teenage years.
However, an important part of growing up is to stop turning to others to figure out what we should do and instead listen to ourselves to figure out what kind of person we want to be. Often this is a mix of discovering internal preferences and simply making the decision that we want to be a certain type of person and then living up to that. Being able to distinguish between what we care about and what was forced on us by others is crucial to living a fulfilled and meaningful life.
Unfortunately not all of us go through this process and that’s when we end up being like a leaf in the wind trying to live up to the standards of whatever person we are dealing with. At least that’s what happened to me when I went back to my home town trying to appeal to each person’s taste, instead of clearly saying why I cared about my job.
In order to stop being a leaf in the wind, it’s important to define our own values. Values act as a compass in our lives and give us direction and meaning.
Russ Harris, a pioneer in the field of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, said
“values are our heart’s deepest desires for the way we want to interact with and relate to the world, other people, and ourselves.”
Of course during different contexts different values become a priority. For example in a career setting being “hard working” is important to me, however trying to live up to that value would be kinda weird when I’m at a party.
To define one’s values is obviously not always easy. It can even be really hard to let go of what your friends, your mom or your boss think is the right thing to do. However, this shouldn’t hold you back from thinking about it. Over time you’ll get better at listening to yourself and noticing what’s important to you. It’s a process that takes time, but every time you do it and reflect on it you’ll move closer to the core.
As soon as you formulate your own values you can constantly check in to see if your behavior is in tune with your values or if you are trying to impress someone or overly adjusting to the other person. So in the situations from the beginning where I talked to my childhood friends I could have asked myself “Am I saying this because I really care about this or because HE cares about it?” And it would become apparent that I’m just adjusting.
Therefore having figured out what your values are makes it a lot easier to be yourself, because now you actually know what it means to be yourself.
The most extreme case where it becomes apparent when somebody has no idea what their values actually are, are guys on a first date. Usually they try to adjust to whatever the other person cares about, but since they have no idea yet what the girls’ values are, they end up trying all different things to figure out what sticks. Or in Louis CK’s words
“A guy during a first date is just a mess. He has no actually personality. He is just a mish-mash of different kinds of dudes for a couple of seconds each. Just anything. No cohesive…Just like random notes cut out of a magazine…Just like a blind dick in space….Just thrusting in infinite directions. Hopefully to find pay dirt at some place.”
On the deepest level we emulate other people’s values because we hope for their appreciation and acceptance. Ironically, when we stop adjusting and instead focus on living up to your own values, one side effect is that other will respect you more. You might not build immediate rapport with everybody, but people will sense that you are real and authentic, which usually draws people in.
And that’s exactly the experience I had over the past years. The more I started to unravel what it is that I care about and then communicate it, the more people began to lean in. So when someone asks me nowadays about my career I answer honestly and say “It’s going great. My work is very intellectually challenging and I can help a ton of people at the same time. I love that!”
And now….
It’s your turn.
If you sometimes suffer from the “blind dick in space” phenomenon and try to overly adjust to fit in, start independently defining your own values. As soon as you’ve done this, you can begin to catch yourself every time you are trying to adjust and then focus back on your values.
Defining your values is an ever-improving process and it takes some practice. The trick is to simply start somewhere and then move closer and closer to the core. You can kick things off by using this worksheet to define your values: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Values Worksheet
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