Being your own Island

This is an important feeling I've learned which I feel like I've been lacking for a lot of my life. If you feel like you're having trouble socializing or connecting with people, I think you'll find this post helpful.

Have you ever been struggling at something that other people just seem to have an instinctual affinity for? Like as if they were that way since they were born and you were somehow built defective? This is the same feeling that I had and understanding this quote helped me to better understand and get comfortable with myself.

This phrase is almost exactly as I heard it, "Be your own island".

If this doesn't resonate with you, there are a few other ways I can think to explain it. Like for example, think of your personality, your values, your likes, dislikes, quirks, limits, experiences and anything else you can think of as objects in your own home. You are the only one that lives there.

In this house, you don't really want to let a stranger in - And then for people you know, how well do you have to know them before letting them in? Would you let them into your bedroom or just the living room?

Same goes for the island. Imagine yourself and everyone else has their own island.

Would you go and start walking on another person's island without their permission? What if they had a gun? What if you see something you really didn't want to see?

Same goes for other people, and this is what literally spun me around. It made it so much more easier for me to understand why I felt like I wasn't truly connecting with people.

So let's start from the very begining. I'm going to use the house example here since I feel it will make more sense to whoever is reading.

You're in a new country, in a new neighborhood. Brand new house, just yourself, your rust bucket car and all your cherished belongings. From the outside, your 'home' looks almost like everybody else's, just a slightly different shape and colour.

It's your first day of work in your new office, so you drive out to the building and you start to meet some of your co-workers.

Would you:

Let's take a look at what each might look like in the real world:

For the first case, it might be introducing yourself and then when someone asks what you do as a hobby, you give them a 10-minute speech about how you really like collecting rocks, and often like to sing Karaoke by yourself on the weekends. Like chill dude, you only just met these people.

For the second case it would look more like a friendly hello, giving your name and telling people one or two things you like to do in your spare time that most other people would do to (something fitness related for example).

The idea is you don't want to be that person who is an open book. And I was struggling for the longest time to come to some sort of understanding on why people say this. Here's my take on it...

You might think that it's about having confidence in yourself, to lay everything bare infront of everyone else. This might be true, but I believe it's superficial confidence. After going deep into the studying that I've done over the last months, I'm of the belief now that it actually goes against everything instinctual to human beings, and it will make you exceptionally unrelatable in the end.

So imagine you are back in tribal civilisation. Everyone lives in clay houses in small villages on the coast. Now imagine you are out foraging for berries and you come across another person who's not in your tribe. They seem a bit threatening, so you decide to submit your spear to them in an attempt to show trust.

Guess what. Now they have two spears and you have nothing but your fists and a bunch of really tasty berries.

You're at the disadvantage here...

This neanderthal is not going to give a fuck about anything but the berries, so he's going to get them one way or another, and you just gave him free reign over it.

Think about "being an open book" as the act of handing over that spear. It opens a box of ammunition for the other person to use. Whether they choose to use it is up to them, but one of the more likely outcomes at the end of everything is that you're gonna get hurt.

With information about you and your feelings, they can tell others, they could poke fun at you, belittle you in group conversations and often have you tied up because they know something embarrassing about you.

This is called emotional harm.

Defend your island at all costs, but at least put a bit of effort into making your ship dock look nice. After all, it's going to be the first thing people will see. For those which will be eventually worthy of visiting your island, it will act as the 'brochure' that gives them a quick idea of what you are like as a person. And for those which bring cannons and gunpowder, it's okay if your dock gets burned down, because at least it wasn't your whole island!

That said, island security is important. There are people who are going to try and break into your island to see what's there, what they can exploit for their own gain. These people are emotional manipulators. They ask way too many questions and overwhelm you into revealing your island way too soon. This will likely lead to emotional harm.

Protect your island at all costs!

I also wanted to quickly talk about the inverse of this strategy. As you visit other people's islands, you will want to remember what they are like!

If you're like me and a lot of people, remembering key facts about other people is pretty hard. I know that names are something I struggle with and am trying to fix. So hopefully this can help you out too!

Think about any one person you know. Then for this person, describe (either out loud or on paper) What their island or house looks like.

Every time you talk to someone, no matter how vapid or deep, there will be something new on their island or in their house that you will be able to pick up on. Was it the way they spoke today? Was it something they talked about? The way they moved?

Is something going on in their island at the moment? What attractions do they have there? Is it lush and tropical or a bit dry? Is there a storm on their island?

What does their living room look like? Do you know anything personal about them in their bedroom? Is their place messy?

As you see how other islands and houses are formed and how people keep them, you'll naturally build a deeper connection with them. And the brilliant thing about this is it will be natural. The way that you develop and maintain this connection will come off as exceptionally genuine because of this. And what I mean by genuine is that you don't really have to think in order to know these things. That shows to the other person that their life means enough to you for it to become one of your reflexes.

Hopefully from this, you will find that some of your connections with others will improve and you'll be doing things that you never would of thought of before, like seeing something in a store and saying to yourself "Hey, John would REALLY love this. I reckon it would make a great addition to his island!"

The other great thing about visiting other people's islands is you can also get ideas on how to improve your own island. But be careful with this. You don't want to add something to your island just because someone else has it and you think it'd be great to show off. It has to be something that even if everyone else has left their islands for another very far away place, you will be comfortable with still living with it on your island.