"Good" Advice?

Throughout life, we are offered advice by several people. However, we tend to receive a lot of advice during the teenage years. I'd like to share with you the worst advice advice that I received during my teenage years and how I adjusted the advice to be more helpful.

From Junior High through college, I struggled a lot with feeling like I fit in. Some well-meaning people saw me trying to fit in and advised me, "Be yourself." So I did. The problem is that in many ways, the natural "me" is different and even unattractive to most people. My sense of humor is weird. I get fascinated with little details that don't matter to anyone else. I tell stories that nobody cares about and ignore opportunities to build relationships. My sense of fashion is one-of-a-kind. In fact, I actually prefer being different. If everyone's doing one thing, I like to choose the opposite. That's the natural me.

I decided to go ahead and follow the advice I had been given, so I tried "being myself". I found myself more confidently annoying people, more boldly telling my dumb jokes, and more frequently commenting on the insignificant details that nobody really cared about.

Did this help me develop relationships with others? No. There were a few friends who I assume took pity on me and looked beyond my weirdness. But most people were not drawn to me any more than they had been before. I was hoping that others would see me and think, "Wow, there's a guy who knows what he likes; I want to hang out with him," but that did not really happen.

At some point in the past few years, I've started following the "Be Yourself" advice in a new way. The advice I follow now is, "Be yourself, in such a way that it helps you connect with people rather than distancing yourself from them." I may still say or do the same things as before, but I've learned that timing is crucial and that how I present an idea is often more important than the idea itself. For example:

• If I have a goofy joke about birds, I'll wait to tell it until a time that people are actually talking about birds, rather than throwing it in at some random time.
• If I feel that things should be done a certain way, I'll preface the idea by acknowledging that it's my own opinion and not necessarily the only good one. I'll also support the idea with solid reasons so that people can see that I've thought it through critically.
• If everyone wants to play one game and I want to play a different one, I'll go with the crowd and purposely have fun with it, and later mention some fun things about the other game.
• If I'd like to share something about myself that I know is unusual, I'll acknowledge up front that it's something that's kind of unusual. This approach has the curious effect of valuing myself and laughing at myself, which usually results in others valuing my uniqueness and sharing some of their own unusual traits.

As much as I think we should appreciate who God made us to be, it's also important to recognize that God is still shaping us. I think that it's best to be willing to grow out of bad habits and grow into new ones. Telling someone to "Be Yourself" seems to imply that they should stay at their current level and be proud of it. It's better to recommend that people capitalize on their strengths and develop their areas of weakness.