Anyone content with being themselves?

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You know my entire life has been a pursuit to change myself in order to function and feel as everyone else around me. So whats so bad about being me? Yes, I have faults and I am very incapable compared to most my age, but so what? Why do I need to change? I don't know why, I've just been convinced that I should. Nowadays however I am not so sure. Maybe it's ok to be me, to be quiet, and to lead an uneventful life.

I dont need to be driving a fancy car,wearing expensive clothes and being someone who everyone knows. But as a youngster growing up I suppose I couldn't really understand this. I just want to know if there are others out there who constantly feel the need to change themselves, and if so what is the driving force behind it?

For me I guess it was naivety and a serious lack of understanding, of both myself and the world at large. It's a pity I didn't have someone to guide and help me to see things differently.

"To thine own self be true" is the best way to go.

As I've gotten older, I'm more comfortable in my own skin. I'm pretty content with who I am. I just feel like I need help in certain areas.

I will never adapt to a system I want destroyed.

I'm quite happy ignoring mainstream society. :O)

I'm content with being myself and although I accept my abilities, I strive to change them always. I think everybody should do that, too.

I am happy with being myself, I just wouldn't mind being a more functional version of myself. I often have a whole lot of stuff riding on my head, and it is a huge effort just to half-assedly scrape by...Perhaps others would do just as badly if they were in my shoes, but it seems like many other people understand the secret to doing stuff that perpetually evades me.

Five or six years go, during my time of discovering I had Asperger's, I briefly felt comfortable in my own skin. Since then however, reality has caught up with me as I get older, and realise my AS diagnosis has done nothing to improve my life (unless you include inspiring false hopes). It's also dawned on me that I have wasted my life - or at least the best years (in terms of potential enjoyment, and the possibility of setting myself up for a different future).

A few years ago I had the attitude that it didn't matter that I didn't have a car, an education, a decent job or a mortgage. I had this idealistic, head-in-the-sand attitude that such things don't matter, and was content to be a "free spirit" living simply. I also took pride in being non-stereotypical, an "alternative" to your Typical Aussie Male. Thrived on eccentricity, gentility and introspection.

What killed that off is waking up to the fact that I am trapped in the underclass, where NO-ONE cares about that muck. Where I live, if you're not university-educated and on a middle-class income (which usually provides a way of escape anyway), you'd better Know Your Place. Fit in or f*** off. No good having a middle-class sensibility unless you're actually middle-class - otherwise you're a fraud.

I guess reaching my mid-30s without gone through the normal rites of passage makes me realise it's nothing to be proud of, and that I'd better straighten up and fly right really soon, or end up in the gutter or an intensive care ward.

Others have said it superbly.

The only thing I would add to these is--I want spiritual enlightenment. For me, the secret is remaining present in the moment. It's not that easy. Suggestions welcomed.

I have a couple Eckhart Tolle books.

"anyone content with themselves?"

No.

But I don't know what content feels like, so I muddle along regardless.

For my first forty eight years, life had been a combination of disasters and miracles. I had no idea why my life was so unlike EVERYBODY else in the world.

I was the smartest person anyone knew, by their own admission. But, I could never Keep A Job, because I never understood the politics of the workplace. I was the nicest guy in the world, just ask anyone that I stopped and helped. Including the three guys that ambushed me and left me for dead when I offered a jump start. When it came to the opposite sex, well, lets just say I still have an impressive handshake.

As I got older, the magnitude of the disasters decreased, and the miracles became less needed. I was just gaining experience at life.

Two years ago, I read an article about kids that were bullied in school. Boy, could I relate. They all had this common thread to their experiences, called Asperger's Syndrome. "What's this?", I thought, as I followed a link in the article to another website that described AS.

EPIPHANY!

I was NOT the only one in the world. Of course, over the next month or seven, I read everything I could on the Internet about AS, hours a day. Sound like anyone you know?

Since then, my zen-like acceptance of life has been because I final found a map with the "you are here" in the right place.

It helps significantly that my workplace of the last 19 years has a Union, so eccentricities are tolerated more readily, and has even given me a much needed outlet for my desire to see Justice and Right Prevail.

Mark

I've always been content with being myself, and for the longest time, I had no problems with it. What has changed that is a) that I began working for a living, and in any job appeareances and interaction are often more important than performance, and b) I began having difficulties holding on to who I was. Everybody changes, and so my interests today are no longer the same as when I was a kid, but it's difficult not to change into somebody I am not. You might also say I haven't quite found my place yet.

I am not content to do whatever comes naturally for me, because being "natural for me" does not make me happy. In fact it makes me miserable

What makes me happy is making friends and being social. I want that, I just have trouble doing it. So when I work hard and study, I am sometimes able to get the human contact I crave.

I also have a lot of difficulty with the opposite sex. Again I want that. (In fact I want sex in general, lol). And again, when I work hard and study, I am able to improve.

I guess just "accepting yourself" or "being content with who you are" comes down to a question of whether or not we are happy.

If someone is happy just doing whatever comes naturally to them, then I say it is totally cool with them not wanting to change. However, if there is someone like me, who is not happy at all with what comes naturally to them, then it only makes sense for that person to want to change.

it's different for everybody.

Yes, I'm happy.

When you make the realization that the only person who is really unhappy when you try to please everyone else is you, you stop worrying about others and learn to care about yourself.

I'm not totally 100% okay with how I am because I do wish I was more like NT people, but accepting that I am what I am makes fretting over that a moot issue.