Just being yourself is a creative act

Just being yourself is a creative act:

But why lie to appear competent or likable? Why not just be yourself? In fact, “just being yourself”, if we examine it closely, takes creative effort. Our expression of who we are involves choices that reflect social and interpersonal context, our mood, our personality, our need to maintain our self-image and so on. If we consider self-presentation as a creative process, we can see how it can easily slide into deception. Every interaction involves decisions about which attributes to emphasize and which to minimize, which impulses to follow and which to ignore. At some point, we may not be choosing among our actual traits and our sincere reactions. We may simply fabricate the traits and reactions the social situation calls for, or that we think it calls for. In other words, we might lie.

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