Own It

Would you rather be really liked by a lot of people and disliked by the rest or mildly liked by most and disliked by very few?

On paper, the answer may seem fairly obvious but for my friend, lets call him David Carter Bentley (or Davey for short), he finds that when he is not comfortable with his audience, he doesn't always walk away loving his behavior. For whatever reason, Davey tends to concern his thoughts with the one person who might respond negatively to his personality.

Instead of standing out, Davey tries to go unnoticed in hopes of avoiding potentially confrontational situations. Most of the time he succeeds at his goal of avoiding negative backlash, however, he finds that he leaves these particular encounters feeling cheap and begins to get down on himself.

You see, Davey is very aware of his actions and desires to not shy away from himself. However, in the heat of the discomfort, he continually resorts to playing it safe. The following is an account of my advice to sweet insecure Davey.

Dear Davey,

This is an intervention letter. You are a good guy and have a lot going for you. That is why you need to quit being a vagina. Be yourself, man! Own it, man! Look at you being all, "oh somebody might be mean to me or get in my face about something... it's not worth it to be competitive like that." Dude... Seriously?.. Nobody even knows what the heck you're talking about? You get yourself worked up over something that hasn't even happened... c'mon! Regardless of how you're behaving, I still like you, but I like you WAY MORE when you let lose a little and just enjoy yourself... even if that means saying something stupid or looking like a spaz sometimes. It's cool man, we aren't going to judge you for it cuz we all look stupid and spastic sometimes.

Also, please stop doing us all the disservice of pandering to the common denominators. Behave, write, quip, and perform for the leaders of thought. So what do you say? How about we just relax a little, live in the moment a little, and enjoy some rockin' good tunes... a little?

Your scareBRO,
Danny B