Fola Daniel Adelesi: You Don’t Have to Impress People!

There’s always the high tendency to want to be in the good books of people at work, in your neighbourhood, at social gatherings, and many other places where we have things to do. Sadly, one of the ways people do this is to try hard to impress people around them. It wouldn’t be bad to effortlessly impress people by your sense of dressing, natural finesse, personae or other things that you’re gifted at or graced with. The issue is with going the extra mile to create that impression for other people.

Oftentimes, this impression that you work hard at creating is about getting people to like or accept you. Or you simply want them to have a certain picture in their heads about you. Sometimes, this picture is about making them feel you have arrived, you’re rich, or you belong to a certain social class.

The responsibility of successfully impressing other people, when not done naturally, is often enormous. It also comes with the burden of persistence, having to step out of your character often, and going faster than your pace or convenience. You can’t always try to impress other people without getting into a rat race in the process.

The most disturbing part of it is that the people you’re working hard to impress aren’t going to see the amount of work you’re putting into your desire to impress them. A few others aren’t going to notice you at all. Some others are going to notice the extra effort and will become irritated that you’re going that far to create an impression of who you’re not.

In all of these, I can assure you that the most important thing is your peace of mind. To keep that peace of mind, just be yourself. Being yourself here does not mean you should be nonchalant about your attitude, appearance, and communication in public. Working on your social and interpersonal skills are personal investments that make you naturally acceptable to people. But if people are asking you for anything beyond that, trust me, they’re asking for too much. If you take the bait, you’re risking your sanity just to impress people.

When you put in so much energy to impress people, you’re likely going to get into financial troubles as well. The extra effort always involves trying so hard to live in an area you may not be able to afford, sometimes it includes going for a car that you cannot afford. For others, it includes trying to live large or look rich. You take some unnecessary vacations that are enough to fund business ideas since the goal is to impress. Most of these impressions are also funded by loans from individuals or corporate organizations. It becomes difficult to pay back some of these loans and you get into trouble with corporate organizations or strain your relationships with individuals.

Here’s one thing you need to remember: after all the impressions that you create for other people, you’ll retire to your closet where you’re faced with the reality of who you truly are and what you own or do not own.

The words about two people not being able to lie to each other always remain golden. If the person who is being lied to isn’t aware, the one who is lying knows that he or she is lying. Focus on your peace of mind and one way to do that is to resist the urge to always impress people.

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