Just Be Yourself

We are who we say we are.

Is the woman who applies make up everyday ‘being herself”? How about the woman with implants, is she ‘being herself’? What about the woman wearing high heels becasue it boosts her height 4 inches? Is the girl you see in nothing but party pics on FaceBook being herself? Lets turn it the other way, what of the woman wearing a business suit that emphasizes her shoulders with pads in the jacket is she ‘being herself’? If she colors her hair does this make her less genuine?

If being ourselves is an idealized state then I should reasonably be able to expect a like-minded fitness model to be attracted to me even if my greatest passion is to sit on my couch, eat a large pizza and wash it down with a 6 pack of Michelob while watching Monday Night Football, right? After all, I am just being myself – it’s who I am.

Believe and so you shall become

The hardest distinction the uninitiated have with the JBY (just be yourself) dynamic is that personality is malleable. Personality is always in flux. The person you are today isn’t who you were 2 years ago, nor the person you’ll be 2 years from now. There are traits and characteristics we may carry with us for a lifetime, but even these are subject to change depending upon circumstance. You define what being yourself is at any given moment and it’s relative to your personal conditions and environment. So where do you draw the line? When does a genuine change of character become legitimate rather than being ‘shallow’ or ‘superficial’? Those are just catch terms that women (and too many chumps) have used with success over the centuries and men have internalized as being states of perception that women think are undesirable, yet they never accurately define. Rather, they stay intentionally ambiguous and relative to an individual woman’s interpretation, while their behaviors indicate their own motivations.

You are who you believe you are, and you are who she perceives you to be.

One of the hardest things for anyone, male or female, to hear is that they need to change their lifestyle because it implies that their just ‘being themselves’ is in some way at fault for their present conditions. It’s analogous to telling someone they’re not living their lives ‘correctly’ or that they’re raising their kids wrong. If I have a friend that is shooting heroin and I actively encourage him to stop and make an effort to help him ‘clean up’, society calls me a hero or a savior. When I encourage my friend to quit smoking before she gets cancer, I’m a concerned good-friend helping my friend with a health risk behavior. But when I tell a friend he needs to change his approach to women and this is a reason for his unhappiness and he needs to change his outlook on, and approach with women, look better and feel better, then I’m a ‘shallow’ prick and insensitive to his ‘problem’. Worse still is even attempting to offer constructive criticism, in as positive a light possible, that a person can improve themselves by changing their outlook and modifying their behavior.

Personality is not only malleable, but it can change dramatically under specific conditions. An easy example of this is veterans with post traumatic stress disorder. These men were exposed to traumatic environments that fundamentally altered their personalities. While this is an extreme illustration it proves that becoming a ‘different person’ is a matter of conditions. If my conditions are such that I enjoy sitting at home eating a whole pizza, washing it down with a six pack of Budweiser and watching Anime on a Friday evening, can I realistically expect that hot fitness instructor at the gym to come on over and genuinely want to fuck my brains out? And why not? After all I’m only being myself and she should “love me for who I am”, right? If this were my case, the conditions that define my personality are incongruous with attracting and/or maintaining a relationship with someone whose conditions are not my own.

JBY is an operative social convention that aids hypergamy.

Women are only too happy to endorse and reinforce JBY for the conscious reasoning that it ‘sounds like the right thing to say’. It’s an unassailable position; who wouldn’t want you to be you? If what counts is all on the inside then anyone telling you to change MUST be manipulating you for their own selfish reasons. This dovetails nicely into the popularized fat-acceptance self-acceptance mantra most women will fall back on when the impact of the Wall begins to manifest itself in their physiques and they want to be loved for “who they are” rather than what they used to look like. However, on a subconscious level, the latent purpose of fostering the JBY social convention in men is yet another sexual selection filtering mechanism. Actually it’s more of a filtering failsafe in that by socially mandating a genuineness in the general populace of men, women are more secure in the accuracy of their sexual assessment of men. If all men are Just Being Themselves and are encouraged to be the person they ‘truly are’, this then aids a woman in determining which man will best satisfy her hypergamy.

As I’ve stated in many a prior post, women claim to want honesty from men, but no woman wants full disclosure. In a general sense I advise this because it serves to sustain a Man’s aura of mystery, only to be progressively discovered by women with the appropriate levels of interest and responsiveness to men. However, another reason to remain deliberately ambiguous is to defuse the JBY dynamic that women assume would be a man’s default psychology.

Iron Rule of Tomassi #8

Always let a woman figure out why she wont ƒuck you, never do it for her.

An integral part of maintaining the feminine imperative as the societal imperative involves keeping women as the primary sexual selectors. As I’ve detailed in many prior comments and posts, this means that a woman’s sexual strategy necessitates that she be in as optimized a condition as her capacity (attractiveness) allows for her to choose from the best males available to satisfy that strategy.

JBY is a tool in maintaining the feminine imperative as the social imperative. Furthermore JBY serves in optimizing hypergamy in aiding a woman’s sense of security about assessing which man will best suit her hypergamy. Ironically, the JBY dynamic gets upended once a monogamous relationship is established by a woman’s anxiety for ‘fixing’ her partner once in that relationship. What was once the pseudo-genuineness of just him being himself is replace by “I’m working on him” in order for him to become the ideal man to meet with her hypergamic approval – thus exposing the calculated nonsense JBY really is to begin with.

We are who we say we are

We can alter our own personalities and have them altered by our conditions or any combination of the two, but to suggest that personality is static is a falsehood. The trap is to think that altering personality is in anyway disingenuous – there are certainly teriffic ‘actors’ or ‘poseurs’, and the like, that when we are confronted with them we sense (or even know) that they are pushing an envelope that they may not be entirely comfortable with, but there is merit to a ‘fake it till you make it’ doctrine. We only percieve it as being ‘false’, ‘superficial’ or as “trying to be something your not” when we have a concept or knowledge of a previous set of personality behaviors. If you met a likable cocky-funny guy at a club this weekend, how are you to know whether he’s the real deal or stretching the limits of his personality if you’ve never met him before?

Law 25: Re-Create Yourself 
Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define it for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions— your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

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Published by Rollo Tomassi

Author of The Rational Male and The Rational Male, Preventive Medicine

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Traveller
Traveller
12 years ago

“An easy example of this is veterans with post traumatic stress disorder. These men were exposed to traumatic environments that fundamentally altered their personalities. While this is an extreme illustration it proves that becoming a ‘different person’ is a matter of conditions.” Nice post, that’s funny, just exiting from Roissy site and he “seems” claim in one of latest post the opposite. Because that phrase is the usual nature vs nurture dilemma, but very limited in scope. Yes he becomes a different person, exactly like a drugged thuig has his brain fried. You can become easily worse, but you need… Read more »

Chad Daring
12 years ago

I say don’t “just be yourself”

Rather just make yourself who you want to be.

Blog Sluts
Blog Sluts
12 years ago
Reply to  Chad Daring

Or better yet, from time to time put yourself in situations difficult to control and see what happens.

Sam Spade
Sam Spade
12 years ago

Boom! Another canard blown out of the water.

JBY was one of the first bits of b.s. I threw out when I first discovered sites like Sosuave.

It’s terrible, lazy advice. Not everyone who says it has ulterior motives or imperatives in mind. It’s become so culturally ingrained that it’s the default advice given when a person either doesn’t have the time to think of something better, or doesn’t care.

Be the man you want to be.

Robert
Robert
12 years ago

It is true that situations and your chosen reaction to how you respond to those situations does influence your personality and this is an on going process every day. For example, years ago when I took personality tests and it would say things such as, I always help other people at the expense of myself, etc. Then, after going through challenging situations thus not being in a position to be able to help others anyway like I used to and learning about game concepts (ie. put your own mission and goals first, don’t be desperate, don’t go on expensive boring… Read more »

YaReally
YaReally
12 years ago

“Actually it’s more of a filtering failsafe in that by socially mandating a genuineness in the general populace of men, women are more secure in the accuracy of their sexual assessment of men. If all men are Just Being Themselves and are encouraged to be the person they ‘truly are’, this then aids a woman in determining which man will best satisfy her hypergamy.” Dead on. Game threatens girls because it makes it harder if not impossible to assess a guy accurately. And down the road when his faking it becomes making it and he’s fully absorbed the qualities he… Read more »

YaReally
YaReally
12 years ago

Also you can change whenever you want, all it takes is a new environment where no one knows you. Whether that’s moving to a new city, starting a new job, going to a bar on the other side of town, going to a bar none of your friends will be at, going on vacation, etc If no one knows you and when you say hello you kick them in the ass, and you do that to a few people there, you are just that guy who kicks people in the ass when he says hello. They just assume you’ve been… Read more »

xsplat
12 years ago

If it is possible to mold your own personality, it should also be possible to mold the personality of others.

Such is a main area of interest of mine.

marchikalanaio
marchikalanaio
12 years ago
Reply to  xsplat

Any tips on creating and molding the perfect complement to someone. Say there’s a guy.. he’s rough, grough, savage like, a benevolent king, a bit of a hermit, and kind of a nerd. What would be his opposite? And how would you go on about doing it

xsplat
12 years ago
Reply to  marchikalanaio

I’m a man and have no experience in molding other men for dating purposes. To start, you’d have to know what it is that you want your man to be.

Does any woman know that?

Johnycomelately
Johnycomelately
12 years ago

Brilliant.

I know two computer geeks who were JBYS type guys who women wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole sexually but were always praised for being ‘nice’.

Two years down the track, hundreds of hours at the gym, tattoos and recreational drugs and these guys are veritably swimming in pussy. Now the girls think they’re assholes.

Cheshirecat
Cheshirecat
12 years ago

“Now the girls think they’re assholes.”

Yeah, I bet they secretly (or not so secretly) want to fuck them now.

Stu
Stu
12 years ago

Rollo,

I wonder if you have ever tried/know someone who has tried cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) in an effort to ‘re-wire’ the subconscious and therefore alter one’s thinking pattern and personality.

First step of most fitness manuals/bodybuilding courses tends to attempt a form of ctb, i.e. positive mental attitude, set and repeat your goals twice a day etc.

Tim
Tim
12 years ago

This is an excellent article. My favorite part was: * If I have a friend that is shooting heroin and I actively encourage him to stop and make an effort to help him ‘clean up’, society calls me a hero or a savior. When I encourage my friend to quit smoking before she gets cancer, I’m a concerned good-friend helping my friend with a health risk behavior. But when I tell a friend he needs to change his approach to women and this is a reason for his unhappiness and he needs to change his outlook on, and approach with… Read more »

walawala
walawala
12 years ago

The bigger question is “Does learning game make you less authentic?” From personal experience, if anything it makes you more real and authentic as a man. It’s interesting, now that I have learned game and understand women’s various cues, I can pick up immediately those sexual undertones from women. The concept of Emotional Intelligence provides great parallels. The idea of EQ is knowing how to read and react to a situation and make it seem like it was the other person’s idea. Is that being “fake” or being more sincere? Perception becomes reality. If people believe you’re the guy who’s… Read more »

Good Luck Chuck
Good Luck Chuck
12 years ago
Reply to  walawala

Most things a man can do to improve himself will serve to make him more “real”. Most guys aren’t born at a huge disadvantage. For them the improvement process is simply stripping away shit that has been piled on them over the years. The person they were conditioned to be isn’t the person they are genetically destined to be.

walawala
walawala
12 years ago

THe other important point is it takes practice. When I was learning game and reading through the various posts. Sometimes the idea of doing somethign nice for a girl was ruled “BETA”. But context is everything. Also, motivation is everything. Sometimes you fall into a trap and can be otherwise moving out of AFC mode, but you still do something beta. Or you add someone on Facebook–beta? In some cases if you never made any contact you’d never get anywhere. In many cases women want you to show interest—then to back off so they can chase you. Is this a… Read more »

Blog Sluts
Blog Sluts
12 years ago

Please. You have to kill the old You every day. Self inflicted Pain for the cause of Mastery is God.

marchikalanaio
marchikalanaio
12 years ago

EXACTLY GLC!

It’s being fed lies, nonsense, the negative influence of a mom, sh!tty peers, and a crappy adolescent stage along with personal opinions to escape the madness which led to most debauchery.

Look at preschool kids in the playground. That’s how it ought to be!

trackback
12 years ago

[…] him to simply NEXT the only plate he’s got spinning is about as useful as telling him to Just Be Himself with the next girl he happens […]

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12 years ago

[…] males chomp at the bit because they’ve been told for the better part of a lifetime to “just be themselves” and everything will go according to fate’s plan. Then for whatever reason they unplug […]

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12 years ago

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11 years ago

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martaj1618
11 years ago

Reblogged this on Blyad and commented:
Law 25: Re-Create Yourself
Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define it for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions— your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

trackback
11 years ago

[…] Just Be Yourself […]

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11 years ago

[…] you don’t believe in yourself enough.” This is a very similar mechanic to the ‘Just Be Yourself‘ line of reasoning. It’s something people say when they don’t know what else to […]

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[…] From the female side, a 3:1 ratio is generally only a temporary condition. Leaving a man who is recognizably a full 2 points beneath her in SMV is really only a formality. Generally this female-side pairing is the result of an extreme circumstance, a particularly materialistic woman or a man who convinced a woman he was more Alpha than he seemed only to backslide into abject Betaness once he mistakenly thought he could get comfortable with her and expected her to love him for just being himself. […]

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10 years ago

[…] will use to pull you back in, traps that will attempt to convince you that you’re ‘being someone you’re not‘ and traps that will flatter you for your insightful desire to improve yourself, but only […]

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9 years ago

[…] internalized Game-awareness and red pill truth is a far different prospect than telling men to just be themselves and trust in the alleged rationalness, equalism and zero-sum goodness inherent in ‘most’ women […]

Joe
Joe
9 years ago

I really don’t get this blog. It seems to be advocating something but I can’t tell what it is. Please give concrete example, perhaps in video form, of men doing it the right way and men doing it the wrong way. These abstract discussion pieces are too ambiguous to know what you are even talking about. P.S.. If someone tole me to “just be yourself” I would not take it to mean eat pizza on the couch” and ONLY that. I might actually wind up doing things (that I like and find energizing and exciting) and if yousaw me you… Read more »

M Simon
9 years ago

Re: heroin. Despite “common knowledge” it is not a very addictive drug . Tobacco is way more addictive. What you will find is that those addicted are very highly likely to have been sexually molested in childhood. Dr. Lonny Shavelson wrote a book on it. “Hooked”. For women the number is 70%. For men 50%. I have had commenters on my articles on the subject tell me that for women it was 100% in their experience. Some veterans think that opiates are useful for more severe cases of PTSD. For the less severe cannabis works. What we call “addicted” is… Read more »

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9 years ago

[…] Just Be Yourself is definitely the worst advice because it’s so endemic of people who are ignorant of Game. […]

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9 years ago

[…] the sad truth is that if this were the attraction key its promoters wish it was, every guy ‘just being himself‘ would be swimming in top shelf pussy. This is a central element to Beta Game – the hope […]

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9 years ago

[…] but the sad truth is that if this were the attraction key its promoters wish it was, every guy ‘just being himself‘ would be swimming in top shelf pussy. This is a central element to Beta Game – the hope that […]

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[…] One of the hardest things for anyone, male or female, to hear is that they need to change their lifestyle because it implies that their just ‘being themselves’ is in some way at fault for their present conditions. It’s analogous to telling someone they’re not living their lives ‘correctly’ or that they’re raising their kids wrong. If I have a friend that is shooting heroin and I actively encourage him to stop and make an effort to help him ‘clean up’, society calls me a hero or a savior. When I encourage my friend to quit smoking before she… Read more »

trackback
9 years ago

[…] different. If anything most men transitioning to a Red Pill mindset tenaciously cling to the ‘Just Be Yourself and the right girl will come along’ […]

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9 years ago

[…] genuineness of your motive is only realized by you. One thing I addressed in Just Be Yourself is the you others would like to make of […]

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8 years ago

[…] of Hypergamous hypocrisy. Every time a woman, or a Vichy Male femsplainer, tells a guy “just be yourself‘ or “women love men who respect women” or in some other way convince him that […]

Anonymous
Anonymous
7 years ago

I suggest you look up the phrase “just be yourself” in google ngram. You’ll see that the use of that phrase is steadily increasing since the 70s. Coincidence? I think not.

trackback
7 years ago

[…] have heard many times, from well-intended Blue Pill men, some variation of the Just Be Yourself self-righteous expectation that women should want to enter into his Frame. “If a woman […]

Greg
Greg
7 years ago

“If you met a likable cocky-funny guy at a club this weekend, how are you to know whether he’s the real deal or stretching the limits of his personality if you’ve never met him before?”

By seeing (or feeling) how congruent he is, which is very hard to fake when doing something you’re not comfortable with.

trackback

[…] Things brings me to another brilliant theme of Tomassi’s writing, which is the classic dating advice that you should “just be yourself”. […]

Roman
6 years ago

Love it! Just be yourself?

I will say it makes sense for a woman as men mate for quantity and women mate for quality. They need to find out if yourself is quality or not, so they want to know what yourself really is.

As for men, if you’re not growing, you’re dying. Myself today will suck compared to myself on 4/19/2018. So if I were single, I’d be advertising myself 4/19/2018, no today’s model

Sri
Sri
6 years ago

Just be yourself actually means – “Create an incredible frame and hold your frame”. You observe that people who are always change to fit into someone else’s frame don’t have any of their own in the first place. It is also another way of saying “Get out of toxic shame”. Accepting oneself means honestly evaluating all aspects of oneself, retaining and refining the good and acknowledging the bad and the ugly. This mindset only works when you have a high value frame of your own to begin with – the root of confidence and personal style. What however is missing… Read more »

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[…] Rollo Tomassi, Just Be Yourself on The Rational Male (January 2012).] narratives that empower women and debilitate men, they are […]

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[…] ourselves.” This injunction is applied to almost every aspect of our lives, whether it be dating, making friends, or even going into a job interview. (Of course, this mantra is overlooked when it […]

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[…] on. The JBY meme is so played out. What is this, The […]

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[…] a chance on yourself, and you’ll find out who you were meant to be all […]

Elias
Elias
4 years ago

Your way out of line on the personality bit. A person cannot change their personality traits. That a pure bullshit. A person can change their mood or behavior depending on the situation but they can never change their personality traits. This is clear in the scientific literature

Yollo Comanche
Yollo Comanche
4 years ago

@Elias

When you can see and honestly assess the consequences of NOT changing the personality traits that signal docility, weakness, and meekness in comparison to other men;

You will change whatever it takes. Godspeed.

Mattathias
Mattathias
4 years ago

I don’t understand how the JBY conditioning should facilitate the feminine Hypergamy. Should it be connected with the filter, I mean if everyone is just being himself then nobody is lying about how they truly are, then women can see without any filter and discard or choose according to their hypergamous filter. Is that right?

Sorry but I am not an English native speaker so I am not sure that I got the whole concept. Could someone please enlighten me? Thanks

TT
TT
4 years ago

When does a genuine change of character become legitimate rather than being ‘shallow’ or ‘superficial’? Those are just catch terms that women (and too many chumps) have used with success over the centuries and men have internalized as being states of perception that women think are undesirable, yet they never accurately define. Well, it’s an essential feature of power, dominance, (feminine) primacy to not define things accurately. Because they will mean what it serves them best that they mean, from time to time. And the subjects will let themselves be subjected to such changes of meaning without any complaint. That’s… Read more »

TT
TT
4 years ago

@Matthatias.

The JBY thing helps female hypergamy because blue-pill conditioned men will fall for it and, as they say, show their cards, while the women will still won’t, and be the actresses they always are.

So they see who you are, and you don’t see who they are. And in a battle (men-women relations are battles, for feminine hypergamy) that helps the women “win”.

isaachl
3 years ago

The funny thing is that, in my case, I was angry when I didn’t get attention from women despite me being completely myself at the time; fat, without a clear vision of what I wanted in life, no value to add to anybody.

I mean, why wouldn’t any woman I find sexually attractive wanted to fuck ME back then? I was such a catch!

It seems pretty obvious now.

In my opinion, it starts with the “I’m working on him” and ends with the “You’re not the same man I fell in love with”.

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[…] Just Be Yourself […]

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[…] is ridiculous! Why should I have to jump through all these hoops for women? I just want to be myself. Why couldn’t I have been a Natural Alpha®? I blame my parents / siblings / teachers / God […]

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