Should You Fight Yourself?

If you grew up shooting 2/30 from the field, constantly sucked at writing, and never truly understood economics, should you change yourself to build a career in something you never had raw talent for?

Because maybe you were really good at math, or could’ve been a quarterback because you were that good, but your passion was something else, idk, maybe fishing.

I mean, my boy Anthony Edwards is a point guard for the Timberwolves, not a software engineer at Apple.

Anthony Edwards is a 6’4 point guard, insanely athletic, has a high basketball IQ, can play defense, can dunk, and is my boi. But I don’t know if he’s secretly doing LeetCode before every game. He might be, but he was given a great talent for being an athlete, so why should he do something else instead?

I’m not saying Anthony Edwards didn’t work for it. He obviously did. And he should be proud of being an NBA player. Now, I don’t know how he was in STEM, but he would’ve had to work 10x harder in something STEM-related if his baseline was incredibly lower.

So given that he had NBA talent, should he pursue a career in medicine even if my boy doesn’t know that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell?

With hard work, dedication, and any other buzzword you hear from TikTok to keep you scrolling, even if you suck at something, you can get better at it. So if you were that kid who shot 2/30, maybe now you shoot 12/30. Which is a massive improvement, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to make it in the NBA.

If you were that same kid who was academically inclined and really good at solving problems, your trajectory changes massively from the NBA to, idk, maybe quant.

So the question arises:

If you can become good at what you love, but great at what you’re naturally built for, which life should you choose?

Society will reward the naturally built-for route because, unfortunately, people don’t care about the process until you achieve something. If you keep grinding and don’t have a measurable outcome, then even though the grind is admirable and shows grit and consistency, the output is what society cares about.

The job, the title, the paycheck, or the cars.

If you spend five years trying to build a business and make $50 million versus making $50,000 in profit and then selling the business, some people will say you wasted time, money, and energy on something that wasn’t that profitable. But when you make $50 million from a business, everyone wants to read your book, learn about your backstory, and worship you.

People then want to study the “process” of the successful person when there might be thousands of people who followed the same process and only made that $50,000 instead.

I think some people don’t realize how bad some people are at certain things, and I don’t mean that in a negative way. Some people just aren’t as smart or athletic as others, and people would love to use the hard-work counter, but some people might just not be built for it.

Working insanely hard at something and failing is still admirable because you put in the work, but unfortunately, hard work doesn’t pay bills.

But even if you have something you can cash in on, like being a 6’8 volleyball player, what if you want to study physics and work at NASA? You could do that, but spiking the ball is way easier.

The argument isn’t free will, like whether you really make decisions for yourself. The argument also isn’t hard work vs. talent.

It’s about meaning.

Can you keep doing something you suck at even if it means you have an unfair advantage somewhere else?

These examples are about profession. What should you spend your life doing?

However, this is also applicable to personality, taste, and just who you are.

When I mean “should you fight yourself?” I mean: should you change who you currently are to fit another mold, or chase your subconscious passion?

Currently, list out who you are: Rocket League, soccer, gym, CS, going out, anime, philosophy, Don Toliver, and Good Will Hunting.

Every single trait is desirable in its own way. However, in the dating world, some traits are valued more than others.

Gaming can be seen as childish, anime is weird, philosophy might be performative, and Good Will Hunting is overrated.

All of these might be true for a lot of people. Some people genuinely think Don Toliver is overrated because he uses too much autotune.

Those people are wrong…

This video was interesting because he made different types of Hinge profiles and saw the results. He is a conventionally attractive person, but changing who he was genuinely worked. The classic good guy vs. bad guy debate was being tested, and I won’t go over the results, but changing yourself does work.

Every archetype is desired to an extent, and each one gets different results. I’m not exactly sure why. I don’t know the psychology of it. Alright, let me larp as a writer.

All the traits I just listed about myself—should I say screw that and start listening to 100% Drake, drinking matcha, going full gym bro, becoming a reader, switching to finance, and, I don’t know, watching K-dramas?

Okay, that lowkey sounds gas, but you know what I mean.

The takeaway from that video is that different personalities attract different results. Changing yourself can work.

I love my own unique bubble, but migrating to a new, bigger, more attractive bubble might lead to new results, maybe better connections, but it’s not me.

The debate could be that even if you change yourself and put on a facade, it won’t last long because it’s not you and people will eventually see that.

But that’s not the point.

The question was: should you fight yourself?

The world constantly rewards results and outcomes.

So maybe now it becomes a question of internal vs. external validation.

“The moment you are disturbed by insult or pleased by praise, you are still a slave.” — Osho

This is one of my favorite quotes, even though I don’t really like quotes, because it shows that your life isn’t your own if you wear a leather jacket because people compliment it and stop listening to Billie Eilish because people think it’s performative.

Maybe your self-love isn’t good enough because you aren’t being rewarded for it, so changing yourself for a reward might actually lead to getting that reward.

Maybe the answer isn’t to never change yourself. You should change. You should grow. But there’s a difference between changing because you genuinely want to become something and changing because the world rewards that version of you more.

If you become the person everyone else wants and finally get the result, did you win?

Or did you just get really good at fighting yourself?