When you set out to try to make as many people like you as possible you become what I call a "general" person. Your stances on things are general, your ideas, creativity, expression, your life is all very general...and nobody has any real problems with you and everyone "generally" likes you.
The problem with this is that nobody really loves you either. You see in order for someone to love somebody else, that person must speak to a core part of the other, relate to strongly held belief, understand a deep feeling, connect to a specific situation.
I always say that in order to find the people who love you, you must also encounter those who hate you, but for some people the fear of being hated is enough to never pursue being loved for who they really are. So they opt for the safer route of being general, but as most realize, it is very unfulfilling to be liked and never loved.
The kind of love that you experience when you let yourself be real and honest about everything, has no pressure because you don't have to put on any show or try to be like anyone else, you can just be how you always are without having to think about it.
This is how you can excel in life, art, and business, when you can be consistent in who you are and fully express your vision without any barriers of fear that you must filter yourself through. I have realized that the moment we try to please everyone, we give up all hope of achieving anything great in life. All of the successful people who ever were, the good and the bad, all had this in common: they were unapologetic about who they were, what they believed, how they lived, and were consistently themselves, and even if their ideas, direction, or vision became modified, they remained unchanged, retaining authenticity throughout it all.
The truth is, nobody is a general person, they only pretend to be in order to not offend anyone. Everyone has something unique and special, something different that makes up their core and passions and it is this that will connect them to humanity in a powerful way. People love real people. It makes us feel like we're not alone, a comforting feeling that someone else sees the world in the same vivid colors as we do, a relief to know that it's ok to not be like the majority, a permission to go ahead and just be me.
Shalom Remnant,
Ash