Always Be Yourself!

Always be yourself! Besides, everyone else is already taken!

The random memories that sometimes snap into my head for no particular reason tend to defy logical explanation.

Why do I suddenly remember this particular thing? Am I remembering this because the universe is giving me a nudge of some sort? Or is this just the result of random brain synapses firing in a particular sequence that they haven't fired in for a long time?

Buckeye tree in bloom, with local "resident."

It was about June of 2003, and I was on a four-day self-development retreat in California.

I was sitting at a picnic table under a big old buckeye tree, writing in my journal, when one of the women who was also attending the retreat asked if she might sit at the table with me. Her name was Nancy, as I recall.

We sat in silence for a while... me writing, she reading a book.

At some point, we seem to both reach a stopping point at the exact same time, then we started to have a conversation about this and that, starting with the fact that we both enjoyed being "with" somebody without feeling the awkward need to fill every moment with words... or no words at all.

She allowed as how she had been single for about six years and was considering the possibility of starting dating again, but was totally terrified by the prospect.

It bubbled to the surface that she had chosen to start a conversation with me because at some point during one of the earlier workshop sessions, I'd mentioned that I sometimes did consulting work for the booming computer and web industry and had been helping a friend with various aspects of one of the early online dating websites which he was building, at the time.

Because Nancy was a very soft spoken shy and quiet person, she wondered what I personally thought about this relatively new way of meeting people through the Internet rather than through a traditional face-to-face approach. And she was wondering whether I thought it was an appropriate thing to try for somebody with her personality.

It ended up being a very long conversation, but I won't get into the majority of it... just the most important take-away which was the importance of having the courage to authentically be yourself.

Like all other venues — and pretty much all aspects of life — early online dating was also dominated by what I would call the ”dress to impress” paradigm.

As in ”how do I make a memorable splash that people will notice and respond to?”

I think the question I asked her back surprised her a little bit because I said ”Well, is this memorable splash you're trying to create for yourself a true representation of who you are? And if it isn't, do you think the sort of person who would respond to a trumped up presentation of you is actually the sort of person you'd want to BE with when you relax into the actual truth of who you are?”

The retreat center from the adjacent hills

Of course this is just personal opinion, but I have a feeling that a lot of failed relationships are the result of people presenting themselves as something they're not in order to impress, invariably leading to disappointment when it turns out that they're actually not all that they set themselves up to be.

The inherent fallacy is the belief that "nobody will respond to us" unless we present ourselves as this ”amazing and exciting person,” even if we're not at all an exciting person, just a regular person with a very regular life.

The bit of advice I ultimately left her with was that it was always the best idea to be completely authentic about who you are, and what you like and what you do. We have this idea that we need to make sure that we get hundreds of points of positive feedback, but all we ultimately need is one single right response.

Send your message out the the universe, and allow it to be heard, as it really is. If it is heard, then it is meant to be heard.

Turtle pond

Nancy ultimately got over her anxieties and did try the online dating route. And she followed my suggestion of being 100% authentically herself in terms of who she was, how she presented herself, and what she was looking for... even though that was far removed from the typical recommended "sales pitch."

I met her again at a different retreat a couple of years later where she introduced me to her new life partner — I'm sorry, I forget his name... Nick, I think — whom she had met through a dating website. He was the only serious response she'd gotten on her profile... everything else had been the usual "trolls."

In spite of the fact that her girlfriends and a couple of her guy friends had all insisted that her online profile was ”horrible and boring” she had persisted through for a few months when it seemed like nobody cared.

As far as Nick was concerned, Nancy had the only female profile that "made sense" to him, among thousands, all filled with accomplishments, puffery and self-importance.

View from Cougar Ridge, sundown

I suppose the message here is that we often fear that our true self is not enough, so we "decorate" it with extra bits, in hopes of impressing people. Problem is, we end up attracting those drawn to the extra bits, not what really lies below.

Always be yourself!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great Friday!

P.S.: All the photos in this post were actually taken AT that 2003 retreat, with one of my earliest digital cameras!

How about YOU? Do you have the courage to be deeply and truly yourself? Do you allow the world to see you, as you are? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2025.09.12 00:05 PDT
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