"why can't I be like other people?"

[cellio]

A friend recently wrote that he feels that he's not as "together" as the people he sees around him. I wanted to record (an abridged copy of) my reply here.

Do you believe that what you see of someone else is the entirety of that person? Most of us hide the bad stuff inside, so you see only the better qualities in other people and everything in yourself. You're not getting a balanced view.

If you don't like something about yourself, examine it and figure out a plan of attack. But don't do it because you think you're not as "good" as other people, because, as I said, your view of other people is flawed. And don't do it because it's what you think others expect. The only changes that ever stick are the ones that you are motivated to make for selfish reasons. Yes, selfish, as in "I'm doing this for me", not "I'm doing this so so-and-so will like me" or "I'm doing this because my doctor says I should" or "I'm doing this because I'll go to hell if I don't".

Several years ago I decided that I needed to work on compassion and consideration and seeing the other side of a conflict and stuff like that (broadly, the "judge others favorably" category). I think I've done pretty well with this (yes, of course I've had slip-ups; who hasn't?), and now frequently look for favorable explanations for what looks like bad behavior. (Yeah, sometimes people are just jerks and you can't whitewash it, but more often there's a legitimate misunderstanding.) Tackling this may have been my greatest personal accomplishment of the last decade, and it couldn't happen until I decided it was important.

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