By Henrylito D. Tacio

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away,” reminds Raymond Hull.

That statement came into my mind while reading a story written by Daniel Gottlieb, the man behind Learning from the Heart: Lessons on Living, Loving and Listening.”  It tells us why we have to be comfortable with who we are rather than who we think we should be:

Max, a sixty-year-old tailor, follows a routine that hasn’t changed in forty-five years. Every day, he puts on the same threadbare clothes and sets off for his shop. Along the way, he stops in at the church to pray. After working hard all day, he returns home and hands over his earnings to his wife.

Max has only one little vice. Every day, he spends a dollar on a single lottery ticket.

One day, Max comes up with a winning ticket. He arrives home with a check for a million dollars. As usual, Max hands the check to his wife. The next morning, he gets up, puts on his threadbare clothes as always, and gets ready to go to work.

His wife stops him. “Max, you’ve worked so hard all your life and now you have the opportunity to enjoy yourself. Go get a new suit and a massage. Take care of yourself!”

Ever-dutiful Max does exactly what his wife suggests. He gets a massage and a facial, and then spends hundreds of dollars on a beautiful new outfit. It’s a complete transformation. Who would ever believe this is the same Max?

He crosses the street with his shoulders back and chest out. Just then, a car barrels down the street and runs over poor Max.

Because he has been so good throughout the years, Max takes the express lane to heaven. He gets to talk to God directly: “God, I only have one question. I have been such a good person my whole life. Always, I’m the same Max, living the same way. Finally, I get to be a different kind of guy, and you take everything away. Why?”

God pauses for a moment and says, “Max, to tell you the truth, I didn’t recognize you.”

“Our self-image is determined by what others think of us,” Flora Schreiber and Melvin Herman once wrote. “If they think of us as inferior, we also consider ourselves inferior. Those who suffer low self-esteem are the ones most likely to be flattened by life’s hammer blows.”

I was reminded of the words of Vincent van Gogh: “If you hear a voice within, you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”  He was talking from experience, of course. 

What we are talking about here is self-confidence – believing in yourself. “Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong,” says Peter T. Mcintyre.  

Aerodynamically, the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn’t know that so it goes on flying anyway. What did Dr. Seuss say again on this subject?  “You have brains in your head,” he wrote. “You have feet in your shoes.  You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.  You’re on your own. And you know what you know.  You are the guy who’ll decide where to go.”

You are who you think you are. “You damage yourself and your relations with other people if you think either too much or too little of yourself,” Marion Leach Jacobsen stated. “Take a modest, realistic view of yourself. And don’t wear a false front because you want to seem to be what you’re not.”

A famous athletic coach once said that most people, including some athletes, are “holdouts.”  They always hold back.  They do not invest themselves 100-percent in competition.  Because of quasi self-giving they never achieve the highest degree of their capacity. 

“Don’t be a holdout,” suggests Norman Vincent Peale.  “Be an all-out.  Do this and life will not hold out on you.”

Forget what other people think of you.  Former American First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was right when she said, “Nobody can make you feel inferior without consent.” 

That was what Academy Award-winning actress Sally Field learned too. “It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else’s eyes.” No wonder, when she took her second Oscar (for Places in the HeartNorma Rae), she told the audience, “Do you really like me?”

Ralph Ellison, in Battle Royal, wrote: “All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was.  I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory.  I was naïve.  I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.  It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with:  that I am nobody but myself.”

Believe in yourself – no matter what.  Who should believe in you but you yourself? Here’s a self-esteem credo from Art Fettig: “God made me.  I was no accident, no happenstance.  I was in God’s plan and he doesn’t make junk ever.  I was born to be a successful human being.  I am somebody special, unique, definitely one of a kind.  And I love me.  That is essential so that I might love you, too.

“I have talents, potential.  Yes, there is greatness in me.  And if I harness that specialness, then I will write my name in the sands of time with my deeds. Yes, I must work harder, longer, with greater drive if I am to excel.  And I will pay the price, for talents demand daily care and honing.  I was born in God’s image and likeness.  And I will strive to do God’s will.”

Judy Garland, the mother of Liza Minnelli and star of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, was one person who had confidence in herself.  She wanted to be known as herself and not as someone else.  As she confided, “Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.”

Unknowingly, people imitate other people in order to be known.  That is why some people are happy if they are told: “You sing like Elvis Presley.”  “You dress like the way Madonna dresses.”  “You act just like Vilma Santos.” 

These people who imitate others seem to be unhappy with themselves?  But why? “Sometimes, it’s a sense of guilt about a wrong done to someone else or a dislike felt toward a close relative such as a parent, a brother, or sister,” contends Gretta Baker.  “Sometimes, it’s a feeling of failure and frustration in their work or their personal relationships.  But in many cases, self-dislike can be traced to our early years of life, when we are forming a self-image.  If a child gets frequent criticism, scolding, nagging, or if he feels that his brothers or sisters are preferred over him, he will develop a sense of unworthiness that can lead to self-dislike.”

Instead of doing so, why don’t you like yourself?  “More than half the hospital beds are filled with people who haven’t been able to come to terms with themselves,” Doris Dickelman informs.  “Granted, it isn’t always easy to do because it involves taking a good look at our weaknesses (and few of us like to do that) as well as our strengths.  There is nothing wrong with having deficiencies.  It’s what we do about them that counts.  Better expend our energies improving rather than deploring.  To work at overcoming weaknesses and reinforcing strengths is the way we grow.”

Perhaps the words of Veronica A. Shoffstall, in After a While (1971) come in handy: “Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers” (After a While, 1971).

Or as Taylor Swift said, “Just be yourself, there is no one better.”