I Didn’t Become Cold, I Just Stopped Performing for People

As we get older, something happens to us.

You stop volunteering your energy for gain.

You didn’t become dramatic, make a big announcement on social media, or pinpoint one single decision. You just noticed a silent shift within yourself. You no longer feel the need to overexplain yourself to people.

The people who usually get these explanations are strangers, people who don’t necessarily deserve an explanation. You are no longer bending your personality to make people feel comfortable.

Sometimes it is being a social chameleon for survival, and sometimes it is a way to get people to like you.

When this stops, it feels like something has gone wrong.

I have spent a long time deciding if I was becoming colder. At some point on this journey of 50 countries and Brazil, I stayed in the in-between area of confusion. I continued to ask myself 2 questions:

Have I lost my compassion and warmth for people?
Am I really an emotionally closed-off person?

…

I finally understood that I haven’t lost anything. I had just stopped performing for people who didn’t deserve it.

That is a completely different thing.

What Was Really Going On

Some people are committed to misunderstanding you.

When I felt like no one understood me, I would overexplain or adapt my personality to match the room’s temperature. The monitoring myself in conversations, hoping people would connect, started to get tiring.

It had finally dawned on me that I was wasting my time. This was the epiphany that broke me open.

I always believed I could only show my best self to people when I was comfortable. I was only comfortable when I didn’t have to perform. If performing for people is stronger than your presence, no person alive is worth giving your energy to.

This isn’t building connection; this is a job. A job with no pay, no acknowledgment, and very expensive in time.

This is what others call cold.

This is what I call recognizing exhaustion.

When Everything Changed for Me

Having the ability to empathize deeply with people can be both a gift and a curse.

I was empathizing with people from two different levels of empathy.

Level 1: I understand who you are, and I can accommodate you and work with you.

Level 2: I understand the way you are, and I don’t want anything to do with you.

Level 2 isn’t being cold, rude, or mean. It is setting boundaries for yourself. It is not a waste of the other person’s time. It is being emotionally mature. It took me 50 countries to figure this out.

You learn to empathize with people without rescuing them. You recognize people’s pain without making it your pain. You can recognize people’s humanity without giving away yours. You can decide certain people are not compatible with you, and you don’t have to make them the villain.

But that doesn’t mean they won’t see you as the villain. It is the price you pay for setting personal boundaries.

Before I came to this conclusion, I had to make people the villains in my head so I could find enough courage to let them go, whether it was short-term or long-term.

Now, I listen to the data. If I feel better alone than in someone’s presence, then the decision is made.

There is no need for trial and error.

What 50 Countries Taught Me About This

Being exposed to multiple cultures accelerated this education in sociology.

As you move through different environments, your definitions of kindness, warmth, rudeness, and directness constantly change. You start to see your own cultural programming.

For me, I finally started to see some of the “Minnesota nice” culture in some of my social interactions. This is something I learned growing up in the Midwest of the USA.

I was trained to be likable and be approachable. I was trained to do this at my own expense and in my own comfort. Being a stoic, black, and introverted man made this matter even more complicated.

You are taught that accommodation is kindness, and that boundaries are cold.

Brazil gave me a different frame of mind. Brazil has a reputation for being socially warm. Travel to Brazil enough times and you realize that this only exists in certain regions of the country, alongside other social dynamics.

But generally this is true about the country. Most Brazilians are genuinely warm socially toward strangers and especially loyal to their own. The warmth isn’t performance, but it is the temperature of the social environment.

Japan showed me that protecting your inner circle isn’t coldness. Japanese social culture tends to be more introverted and stoic. It is part of the culture that respects privacy.

I absorbed all of American culture without knowing it. Somewhere along the way, I got tired of the program that says to behave in disingenuous ways for maximum likability.

On My Own in These 3 Zones

Finding the perfect city is a lie.

I used to think living a Global Lifestyle meant finding the perfect city. I had consumed too much YouTube or Instagram content, which led me to this line of thinking. I spent years chasing the perfect city or placing unrealistic expectations on a city to meet all my needs.

I realized that I wasn’t looking for the perfect city; I was looking for an environment that was easier on my nervous system.

This is why I came up with a 3-zone system.

The Regulation Zone:

This is my sanctuary. It isn’t exciting or Instagram-worthy; it is where I sleep well, where I can walk in the morning without an agenda, where I can hibernate and binge on Netflix, or where I can disappear without a single person asking me where I went.

That place for me is Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

Rio is superficial, Sao Paulo is busy, but they both have their strengths. Lately, their strengths don’t align with my needs, and that’s okay.

As a Black American man, my nervous system needs a place that doesn’t tolerate me, that doesn’t force me to constantly perform, or to be constantly pursuing money; Salvador, Bahia does that for me.

The Exploration Zone:

My childlike curiosity still exists, and it is another element that helps keep my nervous system in check.

This is the part of me that is still curious about the world. This is still the traditional way to travel without marrying yourself to one place. Not every city has to be super interesting or become my next home.

I can just be present and gather data for my next essay and blog post. New observation is the foundation upon which my writing is built.

The Income Zone:

This is the engine that drives the lifestyle.

I return to the United States from time to time to earn money and to handle the administrative side of life. This is the part that isn’t glamorous. I don’t romanticize this part; I make the money, handle familial and friendship affairs, and leave.

For years I was trying to make the Income Zone the Regulation Zone. I was trying to find peace in the same place where I worked.

My life got easier as I separated the two.

What I Really Needed

I didn’t need the place with the best nightlife, the best social scene, beautiful people, or the most prestigious address.

I needed routine, gyms, quiet walks, or familiarity with people that creates an abundant social life.

I didn’t need a place where I had to constantly reinvent myself for new people.

The Difference Between Attachment and Depletion

I want to name this clearly because I’ve confused the two, and I’ve watched other men do the same.

Peaceful detachment sounds like: I don’t need everyone to understand me anymore.

Burnout sounds like: I don’t care about anyone anymore.

Peaceful solitude feels restorative. You emerge from it more present, more capable of genuine connection.

Burnout solitude feels like hiding. You emerge from it more depleted than when you went in because you weren’t actually resting; you were just avoiding.

The version I’m building toward is the first. The version I’ve sometimes inhabited is the second. Knowing the difference, telling the difference in my body, took longer than I’d like to admit.

The goal is not to become the person who says people aren’t worth it.

The goal is to become the person who says, “Not everyone gets access to me.”

Those are not the same sentence. The first is a wound.

The second is a policy.

You can still be compassionate from a distance. You can still care about people without carrying them. You can still love humanity while limiting who gets to touch your actual life. You can still be curious about the world without needing to belong to every room you walk into.

You can have a soft interior and very deliberate boundaries around who gets to see it

That combination, softness and selection, is not a contradiction. It’s just emotional adulthood.

What This Actually Is

I’m not withdrawing from the world. I’m not becoming a hermit. I’m not giving up on connection, depth, or the specific pleasure of a relationship that actually fits.

I’m just finally giving myself permission to stop performing.

To wake up in the morning and not immediately arrange my face into whatever expression the day is going to require. To be quiet when I’m quiet. To be strange in the specific ways that I’m strange. To travel without proving anything to anyone, including myself.

To meet people without needing their approval as a condition of my own ease. To leave situations that require me to become someone else in order to stay in them.

To have a small deliberate life that belongs almost entirely to me.

For a long time that sounded like failure. Like the thing you settle for when the bigger life doesn’t work out.

I’ve had the bigger life, or at least several versions of what people mean by that.

What I want now is something smaller and more honest.

A familiar street at the same hour every morning. A handful of people who know me without needing updates. Work that matters to me whether anyone is watching. Enough peace that I actually notice the sunset instead of photographing it.

That’s not a consolation prize.

That’s finally coming home to myself.

And Salvador is where I’m doing it.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.