Be the best version of yourself

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Be the best version of yourself , unless your mortal shortcoming should be a lack of judgment, self-awareness or common sense — which, if your susceptibility for fatuous LinkedIn wisdom is anything to go by, it will be.

And if it is, sailor, you are hardly well-placed to judge which version of yourself is best, are you?

Now, maybe there’s a better version of yourself out there — one with a keener sense of self-awareness, for example; a realistic appreciation of the manifest ways in which you disappoint those you hold dear, and soundly fail to animate anyone else — but, in our working theory, remember, that version isn’t the one you’re presently being. That version you might not recognise, even it if it hit you in the face which, if the two of you met, there’s a fair chance it would.

And, as you wiped the blood from your nose, what would this better version of you say to you? What would your present you say to this better you?

You wouldn’t recognise it. O tempora! O paradox!

So you’re stuffed. You could ask a friend you trust — but seeing as, Q.E.D., your judgment of your friends isn’t much better, that won’t work either.

But, okay — let’s grant for a moment that you are self-aware enough to see your reparable shortcomings. You know them, and you can fix them. But have you fixed them? Or was it only a life coach’s wit and wisdom — vouchsafed to you through the good offices of LinkedIn — that brought you to this epiphany? If that was the hurdle you needed to get over, what took you so long? and why are you standing there now, looking stupid? Well? What are you waiting for?

There’s a better version of you out there, somewhere in conceptual design space, just waiting to be been.

See also

• Maxims for a happy life