About a year back, I spotted a LinkedIn contact sliding into my DMs with a curious and intriguing offer:

Would I like to take part in a panel on burnout?

I was posting a lot about burnout at the time and I guessed this unexpected slider had spotted my posts, liked what I had to say, and thus was inviting me to say some more.

I accepted his offer.

A couple of weeks later, I found myself on a Zoom call with a bunch of other panellists including a health & wellbeing coach, a BBC journalist, and an energy guru.

Quite the motley crew.

And as the panel got started, I could sense the assertive Type A energy searing through the screen.

No sooner had a question been asked than one of these top dogs would instantly jump in with a confident & convincing point of view.  When they came up for breath, another panellist would grab the burnout baton and do the same.

And on it went.

One of the chaps speaking was so eloquent, I wondered if he’d taken an apprenticeship at the Obama School of Bombastic Brilliance.

I, on the other hand, was less confident.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure that what I had to say was all that interesting or relevant.  So I stayed fairly quiet while others hogged the limelight.

Sure, I made a few points.  But as the panel wrapped, I’d spoken much less than nearly everyone else and what I’d said was much less polished.

This bugged me.

At the time, I was working with a coach.

So a week later, on my next coaching call, I asked him:

Should I have been more outspoken?  Should I have tried to be more impressive?  Should I have put on a bit of an act?

And would this have led to greater impact on the panel?

In hindsight, his advice wasn’t surprising.

But it was still re-assuring.

The essence of that advice?

“You did the right thing Tom.  Just be yourself.  You'll connect with people much more genuinely this way”

Advice like “be yourself” is as old and well-worn as the hills.

For good reason.  There isn’t much in life that can’t be improved by being yourself.

But in a funny sort of way, “be yourself” is some of the most unhelpful advice out there.

I’ve found it unhelpful on everything from giving presentations at work, to social gatherings, to first dates.

Advice like this implies there’s something to do or there’s a place to get to.  Almost like we have an image of ourselves in our mind, and that in order to be ourselves we need to act in line with this image.

But you can’t be yourself when you’re trying to act a certain way.

If anything, being yourself is the opposite.  It’s an undoing or letting go.

All this reminds me of a great quote I heard a while back (try as I might, I can’t remember where).

It goes like this:

Being yourself is who you are when you’re not trying to be anyone else...

Including yourself.

We'll leave it there for today.

- Tom

p.s. If you’re a semi-regular LinkedIn-er like me, feel free to shoot me a connection request here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/itstomgrundy