M - Maturity or manipulation ?

Networking brings you more opportunities. So you attack your introvert nature and try talking to a stranger in a bar.

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Treating people equally takes you higher. Makes your way down easier, they say. So you practice being nice no matter how you judge him. Eventually, you learn.

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Your boss is a baseball fan. To impress him in conversations, you sit through every game painfully, just to be able to make small talk with him the next day. Its not really your thing, but you do it anyway.
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You appreciate people. Tell them they are good and valuable whether you mean it or not. You keep people happy that way. You find ways to diplomatically solve problems without having to ruffle a lot of feathers. This attitude slowly creeps into your home and relationships become a game of tactics.
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Oh boy, the things we do to grow. We just completely change ourselves.

I am not against changing for the better. Evolution is a natural process and if we think about it, we are almost all the time under the influence of either a person or nature or a book that we read or a movie that we watched. Every action we do, or every thought we think is inspired, like this post, which is inspired by what I am seeing around me. Our surroundings constantly shape our belief system, until finally we are left with a set of core values that define us. We learn a few more things, we unlearn a few things. But in trying to seek something from us that is not characteristic of us, are we losing ourselves? Where do you draw the line ?

Is this maturity? Or Manipulation? How much can we actually change? And in the end, who do we actually become?