“Be yourself,” people say to people. “Live your truth,” is another one of my favorites. You know what I say? I say this can be some very bad advice. What is a self? A self is the core of a person. A self is how we distinguish ourselves from other people. But selves aren’t made in vacuums. Selves are the consequences of our biology that has been passed on to us from our natural parents. Selves are the result of our environment because we grew up in a certain place at a certain time with a certain of group of people. What we include in our construction of self is indeed socially constructed – both biologically and environmentally. But perhaps most importantly, a self is also a matter of the individual choices that we make.
But because by being who we are, we can be selling ourselves short and keeping ourselves from being more, being different, being greater. Being who we are can keep us from being who we can become.