There's a lot of truth here, and I generally agree with the sentiment, and can think of close friends of mine who are unusually good at this and are unusually s

There's a lot of truth here, and I generally agree with the sentiment, and can think of close friends of mine who are unusually good at this and are unusually successful and well liked. As a prescriptive piece of advice though, it has a semi-fatal flaw. It is based on the concept of what you "really" feel and what you "really" think. Which of course isn't how the human mind works at all. Some days we think our job is the best thing in the world and we're grateful for it, some days we think it's the one thing holding us back from glory. Sometimes we feel connected to a person, sometimes resentful of the same person. What do we do if our rational brain says that our boss is totally being a reasonable person but our lizard brain wants to choke him because he just told to do something all over again. Must we not speak the white lie that it's "no problem"? What if one finds their emotions are all over the place, and just not evenly regulated, and you have unexplained and somewhat destructive impulses to say tactless and hurtful things to people? Should we go ahead and do that because it's a more "transparent, honest, authentic" version of ourselves? Or should we aim to be more stable, and do our best to "fake it" until it becomes second nature? Here's a secret nobody tells you: The internal conflict and struggles in life you encounter are almost never of the bad/good variety. Such problems create failures of will rather than failures of reasoning, since choosing between being purely cruel and being kind requires little insight. The conflicts that vex us are are between two positive things we value, like balancing giving and sharing and being a team player with independence and growth and looking out for ones self, or balancing being responsible and consistent with being adaptable and curious. Or in this case, balancing being authentic and honest with being focused, professional, and pleasant to be around. You'll never reduce the tradeoff between those values down to simple rules of thumb, they will always be complex, outcomes will always be uncertain, and scenarios will never present themselves again in precisely the same way. You'll have to mostly make it up as you go along, forever. Get a helmet.