When I was younger, the desire to befriend every human I made contact with was pretty strong.
You notice this in most kids. They're social butterflies. The other day at work, I literally watched two small kids become friends because they both liked the sound the Star Wars birthday card made. By the end of their interaction, you'd think they had always been friends.
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Well that was me.
Now, I've become a little more socially awkward, thanks to some good old fashioned bullying in my later elementary school years, but I still have that burning desire to befriend everyone, or at the very least, have everyone like me.
Having this desire has proven to be a lot more difficult and inconvenient than I thought, and there are three main problems with it.
The first problem is that you have trouble telling people what to do especially if you know they don't want to do it.
I've found this to be a problem among young people telling other young people what to do.
An example would be like a young teacher in charge of high schoolers, whom the kids love, having to tell them to put their phones away in class, and being serious. It doesn't really work out. The kids will say "Aw, but we thought you were cool" or "Come on, dude, quit messing around," etc.
In a situation like this, the teacher will either make the decision that they should continue to ask the kids to do what they're told, as they are after all the teacher, or decide they'd rather be well-liked.
As a side-note: I truly admire teachers (and all leaders, in general) that somehow are able to strike the perfect balance between the two. Amazing, all of you.
The second problem is that, sometimes, you meet bad people. Maybe they have a nasty attitude, they have bigoted views, or they're just generally toxic, but when you want everyone to like you, you really mean everyone.
I personally hate this. Since I don't want anyone to hate me, I try to not openly challenge anyone on anything. This is relevant to my previous article on how I don't like speaking up about what I think is right for fear of making someone angry.
It's frustrating because I don't want these close-minded people as my friends. I don't even like them, so why would I care if they didn't like me, or even hated me?
The third problem is that I feel like because I want to be able to appeal to everybody, I can't be myself.
When I was younger, and bullied, the thing I was made fun of for was being too hyperactive, too annoying. Thanks to this, I feel like my natural self is too unbearable for the average person and have adjusted my personality to appear to be quiet and shy until I get to know someone well enough to actually be myself.
Now that's annoying. I shouldn't be afraid of being myself. If someone doesn't like me, they don't have to be my friend, and I don't have to be theirs; it's pretty simple.
Not everyone is going to like you, it's something that I have to learn to accept and move on from. I can't have my fear of people not liking me keep me from doing and saying things that will make me happy. I can't let that rule my life.
"Trying to please everybody is impossible — if you did that, you'd end up in the middle with nobody liking you. You've just got to make the decision about what you think is your best, and do it." — John Lennon
