The Art of Manliness - The Curse of the Self

00:00:00.000 I'm Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:10.960 What a gift the human self is. It enables you to sense and reflect upon your own existence,

00:00:14.960 examine the past and plan for the future, check certain impulses in order to reach for other

00:00:18.420 aims, and conceptualize how others see you, allow you to better connect with them. But

00:00:22.080 my guest says the blessing of the self also comes with a curse, one we need to get a handle

00:00:26.240 on if we're to live flourishing lives. His name is Mark Leary. He's a professor emeritus

00:00:29.800 of psychology and neuroscience and the author of The Curse of the Self, Self-Awareness,

00:00:33.880 Egotism, and the Quality of Human Life. Today on the show, Mark unpacks exactly what the

00:00:37.620 self is and its vital benefits before delving into the downsides that also come with having

00:00:41.660 the self. Mark then shares how people can make the most of the advantages of the self while

00:00:45.460 mitigating its disadvantages, including the practice he most recommends for quieting the

00:00:49.320 kinds of self-related thoughts and ego-driven behaviors that can make us miserable. After

00:00:53.040 the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash self.

00:00:59.800 All right, Mark Leary, welcome to the show.

00:01:11.480 Thank you so much. Appreciate being here.

00:01:13.580 So you are a psychologist who has spent a lot of time researching, thinking about, writing

00:01:19.300 about the self or our sense of self. And this is something I think a lot of, I think most

00:01:25.020 people take for granted, the idea that they are a self, that they have a self. And I think

00:01:29.120 if you'd ask most people on the street, like, what is the self? They'd be kind of hem and

00:01:33.680 haw and be like, well, the self is a self. So in psychology, how does psychology define

00:01:41.460 the self?

00:01:42.200 That is a great first question and a very important one, because the word self is one of the more

00:01:50.140 problematic terms in psychology. It's used in lots of different ways. It's often very poorly

00:01:55.540 defined. And ironically, given that I've studied this stuff for about 40 years now, I've argued

00:02:02.280 that we should stop using the word self and use more precise terms. So it's hard to answer

00:02:08.740 your question. People use it in a lot of different ways. When I think of the self, what I'm talking

00:02:13.160 about is I'm thinking about the ability, the mental apparatus in our brain that allows people

00:02:20.200 to think consciously about themselves. You know, we have cognitive systems in our brain that do all

00:02:26.080 kinds of thinking. We have systems that allow us to do math problems or to assess risks or make

00:02:34.200 inferences about other people. Well, the self is just that mental system that allows us to be

00:02:40.660 self-aware, to be able to think about ourselves consciously in very explicit and abstract and

00:02:47.020 symbolic ways. So psychologists who study the self are interested in this system and how people think

00:02:53.960 about themselves. And more importantly, from my standpoint, to study the consequences of those

00:03:00.540 thoughts about ourselves for our emotions, our motives, and our behavior. Almost everything we do

00:03:06.560 is affected to some extent by how we think about ourselves. So in general, the self is the thing

00:03:12.440 that allows us to think about ourselves and to give us that sense of self that you mentioned.

00:03:18.240 And we can talk about that as we go. So I mean, was Kierkegaard right? He said,

00:03:22.100 famously said, the self is a relation that relates itself to itself. Did he kind of get it right?

00:03:27.460 Yeah, to an extent, that's right. If you think about the self as sort of being the person,

00:03:31.200 it's our ability as a person to relate to ourselves as a person. We can interact with other people. We

00:03:37.080 can think about other people. We can have beliefs about other people. We can do that in a very odd

00:03:42.800 way with ourselves. We have beliefs about ourselves. We talk to ourselves, have conversations with

00:03:48.360 ourselves. So yes, a self is a person relating to him or herself. So there's some debate as to whether

00:03:54.780 animals have a sense of self. There's some evidence that some animals do. The great apes can recognize

00:03:59.140 themselves in the mirror. Elephants can recognize themselves in the mirror, but no species has a

00:04:03.860 sense of self like humans do. It's something unique to us. So are there any theories as to why we

00:04:08.480 developed a self? Are there any adaptive qualities or advantage of it? Absolutely. I mean, it evolved

00:04:14.660 for some reason. And the two primary explanations, and we don't know if these are true, one has to do

00:04:21.280 with planning. Planning is so important to survival. Most animals just live in the moment, just moment by

00:04:28.900 moment. They're just responding to what's happening. They're not thinking about what can I do now that's

00:04:32.780 going to make my life better a week from now. Planning allows us to do that. But planning allows

00:04:38.380 us to be able to imagine ourselves in our own minds in order to do something now to improve life in the

00:04:43.820 future. So one possibility is for planning. The other possibility is for interacting with other people,

00:04:50.400 that our interactions improve if we think about what we're doing, if we have social goals,

00:04:57.140 if we can imagine what other people are thinking about us, so that we became more effective interacting

00:05:03.660 with others to the extent we can think consciously about what we're doing. Those are the two main

00:05:09.080 theories, but we really don't know. All right. So the benefits of the self, one idea is that in order

00:05:14.580 to plan for the future, you have to have an idea of yourself. And I think what psychologists, they call

00:05:19.720 this the analog eye. Is that what it is? The analog eye, yeah. It's sort of the image you have of

00:05:25.260 yourself in your mind. If you think about planning for retirement, let's say, you sort of imagine in

00:05:31.100 your head, this little image of you, what's that going to be like? You're thinking about it. And you

00:05:35.340 can move that around in your mind, sometimes seeing it like you're watching a little movie.

00:05:40.240 There you are sitting on the beach, sometimes seeing it through your own eyes. You're looking out of the

00:05:44.980 beach in retirement, but you can sort of move this little avatar around in a very hazy, funny kind

00:05:51.340 of way in order to plan for the future. Other times we just imagine there's something we have to do. I

00:05:56.220 have to stop and get the laundry on the way home from work, but all planning for the future requires

00:06:03.360 self-awareness. And if you think about, if your life's anything like mine, it's just nothing but a big

00:06:08.160 list of plans. My to-do list is just crazy. And it's all based on my ability to project myself into the

00:06:14.440 future. So that's one of the very important functions of being able to be self-aware.

00:06:19.800 Well, another one too is decision-making. So you make these plans and you have to make a decision

00:06:24.320 and then self-control as well. In order to make decisions, you have to exercise, well, I'm going

00:06:28.540 to do this and not that. And that requires a self. Absolutely. Yes. Self-control requires a self.

00:06:34.820 Decision-making not only requires me to think about the future or what will happen if I make this

00:06:39.300 decision versus if I make that decision, but then I have to pull from a storehouse of information

00:06:44.040 in my brain about myself and what I want to do and what my abilities are and how likely I am to be

00:06:50.880 able to execute certain behaviors. And all of that requires self-awareness. Self-awareness also does a

00:06:56.360 couple of other things that allows us to imagine how other people perceive us. And if you think about

00:07:01.660 how important that is in life, what a mess we would make out of our lives if we couldn't think about

00:07:07.160 how other people are looking at us. I mean, the horrible things we would do and how we would act and how we would

00:07:12.800 look and how we would smell if we couldn't imagine what other people thought. The self is involved in

00:07:18.820 that. The only way I can think about what you think about me is to think about myself and then try to

00:07:24.720 extrapolate somehow. So self-awareness is involved. Self-awareness is involved in introspection. Other animals

00:07:31.320 have emotions and urges and goals, but they don't seem to think about them consciously. You and I can think

00:07:38.760 about, well, why do I want to move to this other town? How do I really feel about this person I'm

00:07:44.980 romantically attached to? Why was I so angry in that meeting yesterday? We introspect on our emotions

00:07:51.680 and motives and intentions. Can't do that without a self. And self-evaluation. So many of our decisions

00:07:59.480 are based on our own view of ourself and what our capabilities are and what we like and what we don't

00:08:06.240 like. And to the extent we can figure that out, we can make better decisions and move forward with

00:08:11.900 life. So self-evaluation is involved. So really, I think of five things that self-awareness does.

00:08:17.260 It allows us to plan, to introspect, to evaluate ourselves, to figure out what other people think

00:08:24.120 about us. And as you said, put all that together, it allows me to at least within limits control my own

00:08:31.560 behavior. Because if you think about what self-control is, it's thinking about yourself in the future.

00:08:36.860 And thinking about what can I do now? Boy, I'd be happier in the future if I lose weight.

00:08:41.200 I need to eat less. So I'm evaluating myself. I'm thinking about the future. And then I'm trying

00:08:47.140 to talk to myself in order to keep myself out of the cookies every night. And all of that requires

00:08:52.840 a self. I think what's really impressive, if you think about human civilization, the things that make

00:08:58.540 human beings different than every other animal, things like we have philosophy and we have religion and

00:09:04.080 we have government and education and science and technology and healthcare, every bit of that

00:09:10.480 requires self-awareness. So I think the reason humans are so incredibly different in good and

00:09:17.440 bad ways from other animals is that we have this capacity that allows us to plan and evaluate and

00:09:24.340 control ourselves that other animals don't have.

00:09:27.080 So those are the benefits of the self. And you wrote this book called The Curse of the Self,

00:09:31.920 where you focus on, well, there's some benefits, but there's always, everything's a trade-off in

00:09:36.080 life, right? There's always trade-offs. But I want to talk about those trades. Before we do,

00:09:39.800 here's kind of another bigger question that might be hard to answer. Like, where does the self come

00:09:44.560 from? Like, how do we, how do we get this, this self that's able to relate to itself?

00:09:50.000 We have no idea. It's all tied up in big questions about consciousness. We are consciously aware of

00:09:58.380 ourselves, but we're also consciously aware of our environments. Researchers don't even know what

00:10:05.000 consciousness is. How is it that you can take a five pound piece of meat, the brain in your head

00:10:12.300 and have it have personal experiences and emotions and thoughts and visual perceptions and hear things

00:10:21.820 is a very fundamental question. I mean, for me, that is really, that's the most important question

00:10:28.620 any science can answer at this moment to understand the sources of consciousness. Only when we understand

00:10:35.060 that, then we can say, well, okay, we're conscious of all kinds of things. How is it that we, unlike most

00:10:41.500 other animals, can be conscious of and think about ourselves? So, I mean, there's lots of theories,

00:10:47.140 there's lots of speculation. It goes back hundreds of years in philosophy, people saying, how do people,

00:10:53.420 how do human beings do this thing? But we really don't know, don't have the slightest idea.

00:10:58.860 Okay. So we don't know, we don't know what makes, why we have a self. Yes.

00:11:03.140 Or science, you know, science says there's theories from philosophy and I'm sure religion has ideas of

00:11:07.140 what the self is or why it's there. And neuroscientists are working on it in terms of

00:11:11.420 trying to understand what could be happening in neurons in the brain that would produce consciousness

00:11:17.600 and self-awareness. And, you know, again, they're speculating, but nobody knows.

00:11:21.900 All right. So there are benefits to having a self. It allows us to plan, allows us to make changes in

00:11:26.660 our lives for the better, but there's also downsides. And one of the downsides you talk about is that

00:11:31.540 having a self can distract us from the world around us. How so? What does that look like?

00:11:37.600 Well, we talk to ourselves in our own heads an awful lot. Sometimes that's very beneficial.

00:11:45.420 We have to sit down and plan, you know, we have to figure things out, but research suggests that

00:11:51.420 the majority of the thinking that we do about ourselves is not beneficial. It's not actionable.

00:11:57.360 It's just ruminating about things, worrying about things, just remembering things from the past.

00:12:05.440 Well, that would be okay, except all of that chatter in our heads interferes with our ability to pay

00:12:11.360 attention to the present situation. And we've all had that happen many times. Think about the talks

00:12:18.120 that you've sat in or meetings you've been in, where suddenly you realize you've lost track of what's

00:12:23.180 going on because you've been wrapped up in your own thoughts about yourself. Or you're supposed to

00:12:30.000 be picking up the laundry on the way home from work. And you're so wrapped up thinking about the

00:12:34.140 day and worrying about something that's happening on the job. That's not until you're pulling into

00:12:38.380 your driveway where you go, dang, I was supposed to pick up the laundry. I found this when I had small

00:12:44.300 children, is I often found that when I was playing with them, I was only playing like I was playing

00:12:51.420 with them because my mind was somewhere else wrapped up in some problem I was thinking about.

00:12:56.400 So these self-thoughts are distracting. Ideally, what we would like to have is a self that turned

00:13:03.000 on when we needed it. When we had to think consciously about ourselves, it would turn on and we'd use it.

00:13:07.720 Then it would turn off again and be in standby mode until we need it again. But our self-thoughts

00:13:13.280 don't work that way. We think about ourselves way too much. So we're distracted by it. We're

00:13:19.860 preoccupied by it. It makes us unhappy sometimes because we're sitting in a meeting thinking about

00:13:25.860 the problem we had with our partner that morning at breakfast. And it's not doing any good for us

00:13:32.160 at the moment. It's just making us miserable. We also know that thinking too much about yourself

00:13:39.240 interferes with memory. You get so caught up in your own thoughts, you're not paying enough attention

00:13:44.620 to what's going on at the moment to be able to encode that event. We have that happen a lot when

00:13:50.660 we meet people for the first time. We're introduced to some stranger. And 30 seconds later, we don't know

00:13:56.840 that person's name, even though we just learned it. Why don't we know it? Probably because we were

00:14:02.860 thinking, well, what am I going to say? Who is this person? Oh, this is a nice looking person. Oh, I wonder

00:14:07.660 if I can trust this person. Our mind is abuzz with self-related thoughts. In extreme cases, our minds

00:14:14.580 are so abuzz that we really can't perform the behaviors we need to perform. We're so distracted.

00:14:20.840 I mean, many of us, we're trying to work on something. We're at the computer, but we're ruminating

00:14:25.520 about a problem, a financial problem, a relationship problem, our kids, whatever. And we're so distracted,

00:14:31.640 we're having trouble devoting our attention to the task we're on. We see that when people choke under

00:14:37.280 pressure, when athletes choke in games, what's really happening? What's really happening is

00:14:43.320 that their self-thoughts are interfering with those automatized behaviors they've learned so well. They

00:14:50.200 can shoot that basketball great. But when they start thinking about their problems or how the game's

00:14:55.000 going, or, oh my God, we're losing the game, those conscious self-thoughts can interfere. Or students

00:15:00.640 experiencing test anxiety. When students have test anxiety, yeah, they're anxious and that's a problem.

00:15:06.100 But the big problem is they say their mind goes blank. I was so nervous, I couldn't think about

00:15:11.320 the test. My mind went blank. Their mind didn't go blank at all. Their mind filled up with catastrophizing

00:15:17.500 self-thoughts that made them unable to pull out the information they needed. So I had a student once

00:15:25.380 who characterized this very well. I would encourage your listeners actually to try for the next three

00:15:31.920 minutes. If there's someplace where they can safely do this, just sit down and say, I'm not going to

00:15:36.820 think any thoughts about myself for three minutes. It's my brain. I can control it. I'm going to sit

00:15:41.260 here and not think a single thought about myself for three minutes. And I think they will be amazed if

00:15:48.320 they've never tried that, that they can't do it. You can't get past 15 seconds. And then you think

00:15:54.100 about the thought and, oh, I wasn't supposed to think that thought. Let me try it. And it's just a

00:15:58.700 cacophony of chatter. I had a student say, after I asked my students to try that for three minutes,

00:16:05.360 she said, I didn't realize how much my brain thinks without my permission,

00:16:10.260 which I think really captures it beautifully. Yes. Your brain thinks without your permission

00:16:15.420 and it's distracting and preoccupying. That's a tough thing to do because you have to use the self to

00:16:20.740 not think about the self, which is like fighting fire with fire.

00:16:24.140 That is, that's exactly right. Exactly right. It's a problem and it does impede the quality of

00:16:30.180 our lives by interfering with what we're trying to do. And another way that thinking about the

00:16:35.160 self or the self can get, can make our lives, you know, distract us and make life harder is insomnia

00:16:40.480 is often just the self thinking that I can't sleep. This is a problem. Why can't I sleep?

00:16:45.920 I'm sure, you know, cats don't think, oh man, I can't sleep. They just,

00:16:50.040 no, they don't even think about it, but we make the problem worse by thinking about the fact that

00:16:54.980 we can't sleep. Perfect example. Yeah. Why do we lie awake at night? It starts out thinking about

00:17:01.340 the day, thinking about problems, maybe just ruminating. Sometimes they're not even problems

00:17:06.300 might be something positive. I've got to decide tomorrow if I'm going to go vacation in this

00:17:09.780 location or that location. That's not a problem, but that's me lying awake at night, trying to make

00:17:14.880 a decision with these self-relevant thoughts. Then, as you say, it turns from staying awake

00:17:21.280 because those kinds of thoughts are intruding to thoughts coming in about the fact that I got to

00:17:25.880 go to sleep. I got a busy day tomorrow. Why can't I go to sleep? What's wrong with me? You got to relax.

00:17:30.640 And you know, the old classic advice for insomnia is count sheep. Well, that's cliche,

00:17:37.300 but the general idea is if you really could count sheep and stay focused on counting sheep,

00:17:44.360 it would crowd out all of those self-relevant thoughts. Now that's hard because the self-thoughts

00:17:51.380 are more powerful than the images of sheep jumping over a fence or something. But the general idea is

00:17:57.240 if you can start thinking about something neutral, not self-relevant, then you'll quiet down all that

00:18:04.500 self-chatter and go to sleep. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:18:10.680 And now back to the show. All right. So besides distracting us from the world beyond our head,

00:18:15.820 the self can also distort the way we see reality. How so? Well, these thoughts we have about ourselves

00:18:21.640 have content of various kinds. And one thing we know is that our thoughts about ourselves are not

00:18:29.400 necessarily reality. They're just inferences or hypotheses, which means that when we base our

00:18:37.760 behavior and our decisions and our emotions on our beliefs and our thoughts about ourselves,

00:18:44.000 those beliefs and thoughts about ourselves are sometimes wrong. Now, if they were just sort of

00:18:49.760 randomly wrong, that would be sort of a problem. That means we're not being accurate and are accurate

00:18:55.040 in our self-perceptions. But we know that our self-thoughts tend to be biased in a favorable

00:19:00.560 direction. And that shouldn't surprise anybody. When you ask people to rate, you give them a list of

00:19:10.100 characteristics and abilities, and you ask them, do you think you're below average on this characteristic

00:19:15.440 or average or above average on this characteristic? Things like, how good of a driver are you?

00:19:21.600 Are you below average or above average as a driver? As a lover, are you below average or above average?

00:19:27.420 Are you more moral than average or less moral than average than the average person? So we're asking

00:19:33.320 people to rate themselves compared to everybody else on these positive and negative characteristics.

00:19:38.800 Well, if people knew the truth, half the people would say I'm below average and half the people would

00:19:45.440 say they're above average. That's the way averages work. Half the people are below and half the people

00:19:49.620 are above in some normal distribution of driving ability. But that's not what happens. What happens

00:19:57.640 is on almost all characteristics, 70% to 80% of people say that they're above average. When it comes to

00:20:05.680 being a good employee, if you ask people in your organization, you think you're above average as an

00:20:11.720 employee or below average as an employee? Again, if people really knew the answer, if a big voice came out

00:20:17.560 of the sky and told you the truth, half the people would say they were below average. Only 13% of

00:20:24.180 people say they're below average at work. We have this strong bias to perceive ourselves too positively.

00:20:31.380 And that creates all kinds of problems. It creates problems in our decision making. We're making

00:20:36.600 decisions based upon false assumptions about how good we are at things. And that's not good. It creates

00:20:43.260 conflicts with other people because if you think you're doing better than most other people,

00:20:47.640 you rightfully feel entitled to higher salaries or more respect or more compliments. But if we're

00:20:54.400 overestimating how good we are at things, then we're not going to get as much pay or attention or respect

00:21:01.240 or deference as we think we deserve and we're going to be disgruntled by. So this better than average

00:21:07.780 effect is so robust. I did a study a few years ago where I asked a very large sample. I said,

00:21:14.160 I want you to think of all the disagreements you have with other people. It could be trivial

00:21:18.460 disagreements, not unimportant things or major disagreements. In what percentage of those

00:21:25.000 disagreements you have with other people, do you think that you are the one who's correct? 0.97

00:21:30.420 And again, the average person, the average should be 50%. Now, some people may be more correct than

00:21:36.100 others. But if a disagreement has one wrong person or one right person, then on average,

00:21:42.840 the average person should be right half the time. That's not what you get. The average person thinks

00:21:48.500 that they are right about two thirds of the time. Well, that creates a lot of conflict when we disagree

00:21:54.040 with other people. We think we are more correct than we statistically and logically can be.

00:22:00.120 And so the over positivity of our self thoughts create a number of problems in our lives. And there's

00:22:06.020 not much we can do about it, except realize, however you feel about yourself, it's probably

00:22:11.740 too positive. That's kind of depressing and demoralizing. Even if you say I'm not above

00:22:17.640 average, I'm below average, chances are you're probably even more below average than you think

00:22:22.280 you are. We just have this tremendous tendency to self enhance.

00:22:26.220 All right. So we have this bias to think that we're awesome. And besides thinking already that

00:22:30.300 we're great, we also evaluate events in our lives that happened to us in a positive light,

00:22:35.700 typically. So if we get a, I don't know, if a project turns out great that we were working on,

00:22:40.820 we think, well, that was mostly me and everyone else. Yeah, they didn't really do anything on that

00:22:45.240 project. It was me. Probably not the case. Or if something, but here's the flip side is if

00:22:50.260 something, if it turns out poorly, what we do is like, well, that wasn't my fault. It was like,

00:22:55.380 everyone else is a bunch of dum-dums and I did everything right. And it's their fault. 1.00

00:23:01.060 Absolutely. Those are called self-serving attributions. The attributions, the explanations

00:23:06.640 we make for event events in our lives are very self-serving. You're right. We take more credit for

00:23:12.920 the positive things and less credit for the negative things than, than we should. And again,

00:23:18.400 that creates conflict among people because we have disagreements about who was responsible for this,

00:23:23.860 this argument that you had with your partner this morning. It was whose fault was it?

00:23:28.380 I don't know, but it wasn't mine. So yeah, self-serving attributions are a problem as well.

00:23:34.700 So another way the self can make us miserable and be a curse is that it can exacerbate negative emotions

00:23:41.780 like sadness and worry. I think there's research that suggests that animals have emotions like fear.

00:23:49.360 They experience that, but they don't, they don't think about their fear. So what does the ability

00:23:54.200 to think about our emotions, how does that make them like worse?

00:23:59.960 We conjure emotions on our own that have nothing to do with our situations. I like you bringing up the

00:24:06.620 animals there because yes, animals have emotions. They have negative emotions when there are threats

00:24:11.580 or challenges in their environment at the moment. And they have positive emotions when good things are

00:24:17.420 happening, benefits and opportunities. That happens with us as well, but we can conjure up, we create so

00:24:24.740 many emotions for ourselves by just how we think about ourselves and our lives. Nothing has to be

00:24:31.280 happening. I can be having a perfectly nice evening, sitting, watching television, relaxing, my life

00:24:36.520 at the moment is fine. And I can make myself miserable replaying that argument I had with my

00:24:41.660 boss a week ago, or worrying about the medical procedure I have to have two weeks from now,

00:24:46.560 or starting to think about my retirement account. We create an awful lot of negative emotions in

00:24:53.860 ourselves, sadness, anger, anxiety in particular, worrying about things that we don't have any control

00:25:00.420 over, but we sit and worry. And you're right, the animals aren't doing that. You don't get the sense

00:25:04.780 that the owl sleeping in its tree is worried about what it's going to do tomorrow, what might happen

00:25:12.300 to it. Now, let me point out, sometimes those negative emotions we create for ourselves can be

00:25:16.880 beneficial. That worrying about that thing, I worry that I've got some weird symptoms here. Well, that may

00:25:24.520 motivate us to go to the doctor. So sometimes our negative emotions we create are actionable.

00:25:30.720 There's something we can do about them. And they're, they're motivational and that's fine.

00:25:34.820 The vast majority of times when you make yourself feel badly, it's not actionable. You're just feeling

00:25:41.100 badly and it's not improving the quality of your life at all. So a lot of human unhappiness is generated

00:25:46.740 by the way we think about ourselves and our lives and has nothing to do with the situation we're in at

00:25:52.280 that moment. Well, a big emotion that people experience that can really get in the way of

00:25:57.860 having a flourishing life that's caused directly by the self is social anxiety, right? It's like this

00:26:04.800 social anxiety is caused by you thinking too much about how you are engaging in that social interaction.

00:26:12.120 So you're just thinking about yourself. And as a result, it just makes you anxious and want to avoid

00:26:16.840 social interactions completely. Exactly. You nailed it. Social anxiety is me worrying about

00:26:22.680 how I'm coming across to other people. I've got to give that talk tomorrow and I'm worried about it

00:26:27.920 and anxious, got to get up in front of the audience or I'm meeting new people or I'm going on a job

00:26:32.220 interview or a date with someone for the first time. And I'm upset and anxious and ruminating about

00:26:37.600 it. And that's solely my concerns with what the other people will think. And again, there's nothing

00:26:43.080 wrong with being concerned with making a good impression. That's important for the quality

00:26:46.760 of our lives too. But there's a big downside if it makes you so anxious that you're terrified when

00:26:52.880 you have to get up and give the talk or you have to go in for the job interview. And you've created

00:26:56.760 that in your own mind. Absolutely. And the other thing, the self just makes these problems worse.

00:27:02.220 Okay. The self can conjure up, we have these emotions and then we start ruminating on them.

00:27:07.480 It makes it worse, right? So we think, oh, well, I'm worried about this event that's about to happen.

00:27:12.420 So you start thinking coming up and you start worrying more, but then yourself can also be

00:27:16.920 like, why are you worrying about this? You're such a dumb, dumb. And so you just make things even 1.00

00:27:22.520 worse. You start beating yourself up for the self having an improper response to your emotions.

00:27:30.780 Exactly. And that's that introspection function I was talking about. We analyze ourselves and we get

00:27:37.060 upset at ourselves because we're not as happy as we should be, or we're more anxious than we should

00:27:41.860 be. We beat ourselves up and get depressed about the fact we're depressed. You know, life's tough

00:27:47.020 enough. There are real challenges we all have to live with that create anxiety and sadness and anger

00:27:53.700 and other negative emotions. Those are real things. There's nothing wrong with that. The sad thing is

00:27:58.740 that all of us heap a whole bunch of stuff on top of that that's not necessary. And we created it.

00:28:04.340 And again, if we had a switch and could turn off all of this self-reflection,

00:28:08.740 we could shut down that part of our misery. And when I think about things that upset me,

00:28:13.400 most of them are in my own head. It's, you know, it's not that I'm confronting a problem at the

00:28:17.820 moment. It's in my head. Well, you highlight some research that can show how introspection can

00:28:22.440 mess up relationships or, you know, harm relationships. So this idea, you know, you want to have like

00:28:28.260 evaluate your relationship with a significant other. And then you do this quiz, for example,

00:28:32.660 and it's like, what, how would you rate your significant other on X trait? You never thought

00:28:38.200 about that trait before you were attracted to your partner for some other reason. Wasn't that

00:28:42.660 trait, but then you realize, wait, that my partner, my wife doesn't have that trait. I don't know.

00:28:48.740 I don't, maybe we don't have a good relationship, but if you hadn't even thought about it, it wouldn't

00:28:52.440 have been a problem. Yeah. There's great research on the downsides of introspection. They've shown it

00:28:57.320 with relationships. They have shown it with people's ratings of the tastes of food, how people

00:29:02.900 taste jams and rate how it tastes and why they like it or don't like it changes their perceptions

00:29:09.180 of how good the jam is. What's happening, I think, is so many of our reactions to things,

00:29:14.700 our relationship. Why are we attracted to the person we're attracted to? There's a zillion possible

00:29:20.060 reasons. We are only conscious of some of those things. A lot of it's happening below the level of

00:29:25.800 awareness. We don't know why we were attracted to that person. Why does this jam taste good? I don't

00:29:31.340 know. It just tastes good. When you take something that's automatic, like the fact we like one person

00:29:37.400 or we like this jam, and you try to make it conscious and think deliberately about it and

00:29:42.700 introspect on it, you can start to focus on things. As you said, that we're actually somewhat irrelevant

00:29:48.840 in our attraction to the person initially, but once we start thinking about it, that can actually

00:29:54.220 modify how we think about the person or the jam or something else. So, you know, if you take it too

00:30:00.740 far, it sounds like you're saying, well, don't introspect. Don't try to think about why you feel

00:30:05.100 the way that you feel. And I'm not saying that. I'm saying there's a potential downside. A lot of

00:30:10.760 our reactions are automatic, and if we try to think about them consciously, we're going to get it wrong

00:30:15.820 in terms of why. We just don't know why we like or don't like certain things. We'll come up with

00:30:21.520 reasons. We'll explain it, and they seem right, but are those the real reasons why we like our

00:30:26.440 partner? Is that the real reason this jam tastes good? If we're honest with ourselves, we really

00:30:31.440 don't know. All right. So, the self has benefits, but also comes with downsides. And some of these

00:30:36.720 downsides, these negative aspects of the self can become so overwhelming for people that they try to

00:30:42.140 escape the self. I think Roy Baumeister wrote a book a long time ago called Escaping the Self,

00:30:47.700 where he makes the case that things like alcoholism, extreme sports, addiction, there are

00:30:54.100 ways to sort of quiet the self down. How do we think those things would quiet the self down but

00:31:00.960 actually make us more miserable? Well, we all do things every day to try to quiet the self

00:31:07.920 chatter down. We don't consciously think about it that way. Usually, it's not that we sit down to

00:31:12.600 watch television and say, hey, I need to think less about my problems, so I'm going to lose myself

00:31:17.020 on mindless television. But part of the appeal of leisure activities is that it does get us less

00:31:23.480 focused on ourself, watching mindless television, watching sports, playing sports, socializing with

00:31:32.160 other people, going shopping, sex, things that take our minds off of ourself. Now, all of those

00:31:39.900 activities may be pleasurable in their own right. If you're playing sports or enjoying a television show

00:31:44.380 or socializing, yes, they're pleasurable in their own right. But part of the pleasure comes from the

00:31:49.640 fact that they're taking me away from thinking about my problems. Yeah. Research on alcohol says

00:31:56.040 one of the things that it does, it sort of quiets the self. You become less self-aware, right? And so

00:32:00.840 that's why people tend to be a little more social. They say things they otherwise wouldn't have said

00:32:05.480 because the self is basically, I don't know, taking a break a little bit when the alcohol gets into

00:32:10.840 your brain. Absolutely true. I mean, these general ways we all do sort of quiet the self on a daily

00:32:17.700 basis doesn't work for everybody. So alcohol and drugs is the big dysfunctional way to do that. 0.97

00:32:23.720 Alcohol does two things. One, it's a central nervous system depressant. So it does relax you. Even if it

00:32:29.340 doesn't change your self-thoughts, it does produce a little bit more relaxation. But there are studies

00:32:33.880 that show that people think less about themselves when they drink. In general, there are exceptions

00:32:39.880 to that. One thing you mentioned in the book, too, is that religion and philosophy have been aware about

00:32:45.280 this idea of the problems of the self, and they've tried to figure out ways to mitigate the curse of

00:32:49.680 the self. How have they done that?

00:32:53.420 Religion sort of feeds into the self in two ways. One is religion really sort of does two things.

00:33:01.380 Religions differ a lot, but it has two functions. One is to provide answers to the big existential

00:33:07.460 questions. How did all this get here? Who am I? How do I relate to the universe? What happens after I die?

00:33:14.880 And religions, in different ways, provide some guidance, some hints, some answers to those kinds

00:33:21.000 of questions. Well, those questions are all self-generated. All those other animals out there in the woods are

00:33:25.900 not sitting around wondering about how the universe was created or what's going to happen after they die.

00:33:30.640 We do wonder about those things, and the uncertainty and the fear can be problematic for some people.

00:33:36.340 Religion steps in to provide some tentative answers. The second thing that religion does related to

00:33:41.160 the self is it provides a moral code. It says, here's the ways that you ought to treat each other.

00:33:48.000 Here are the ways that you ought to behave. If you look at what most of those moral codes say,

00:33:53.520 they involve not hurting other people. They involve not being selfish, not being too self-centered,

00:34:01.240 treating other people the way you would like to be treated. So religious moral codes are ways to try

00:34:09.000 to get people not to behave in an egocentric, selfish, self-centered kind of way. That if people

00:34:19.220 weren't already self-centered, if people weren't selfish, we wouldn't need moral codes, right?

00:34:24.520 Everybody would behave themselves and get along pretty well, and that would work out fine. Now,

00:34:30.060 the world religions approach the problem of the self in different ways. The Western religions,

00:34:36.360 Judaism, Christianity, Islam, their approach to the problems created by the self, the self-centeredness 0.94

00:34:43.000 and selfishness is to provide this moral code and say, here are the rules you really need to follow.

00:34:47.800 You need to become a new kind of person in one way or another, and different religions look at that

00:34:51.580 differently and behave in this way in order to be a good person. The Eastern religions like Buddhism,

00:34:59.440 Hinduism, Taoism, as well as a lot of indigenous religions, they have moral codes, but they focus more

00:35:07.380 on getting to the root of the problem in terms of quieting down the self, removing some of the curse

00:35:14.320 of the self, making people less self-preoccupied through meditation, through rituals, through

00:35:21.660 spiritually related dancing, quiet down all of this stuff about yourself, and you're going to have a

00:35:28.320 happier and healthier and better life and sort of naturally be better without having to just tell you

00:35:35.740 to behave in certain ways. But both sets of religions, Western and Eastern, are both coming

00:35:40.320 at the problem that too much self-thought, too much egotism, too much self-awareness is a problem

00:35:46.860 for people personally, and it's a problem for how people treat other people. Okay, so the self has

00:35:53.060 benefits, there are downsides, and you're not advocating that we just kind of become un-self-aware,

00:35:59.200 because that would cause lots of problems in our life. Not at all.

00:36:00.820 So what does the research say about what we can do to quiet the curse of the self? So we get like

00:36:07.020 the benefits of the self, which is that planning, decision-making, self-evaluation, while mitigating

00:36:12.440 the downsides? Because I imagine you can't eliminate the downsides completely. That just comes with having

00:36:16.860 a self, you're going to have those downsides. I think so. But I think you can improve the quality

00:36:21.940 of people's lives by minimizing them, by mitigating them, and cutting them down by 20 or 30 percent

00:36:27.260 would create a real improvement in the quality of life. Research suggests a number of things,

00:36:33.420 but they tend to fall into two or three large categories. If you're trying to say, how do I

00:36:39.060 minimize the impact of my self-thoughts on the quality of my life and how I affect the world?

00:36:46.620 The first is find some way to reduce the sheer amount of self-thoughts you have. To cut back on

00:36:56.420 the frequency of self-related thoughts, because many of them are useless. They're making you miserable. 0.98

00:37:01.440 They're creating conflicts with other people. They're being egotistical. How can we shave that back? 0.81

00:37:07.220 And the most tried and true way is to learn to meditate. And I realize a lot of people look at

00:37:13.260 meditation askance as something really weird. It can be tied up in some odd things, but basically,

00:37:22.780 it comes down to simply a psychological training tool. That it's a way to quiet down the degree to

00:37:29.940 which you are thinking about yourself and to not take your self-thoughts quite so seriously.

00:37:36.420 And there are plenty of things on the internet. There are classes in meditation. There's different

00:37:41.140 brands of meditation. And I know a lot of people sort of feel like it's, well, it's associated with

00:37:46.400 spirituality and religion and some new age kinds of ideas. And it often is, but it doesn't have to be.

00:37:52.580 It can be purely a mental psychological training tool focused only on trying to diminish the degree

00:38:00.460 to which you think about yourself. And people who go through meditation classes and practice regularly,

00:38:05.620 it's clear that they think less about themselves. They still get tangled up in all of the stuff we've

00:38:12.320 been talking about. You're right. The curse of the self does not go away, but they do it less and they

00:38:17.060 report being more relaxed and more happy and more balanced because they don't have all of that

00:38:22.460 chatter going on. So the first thing is to just try to slow down the pace at which you think about

00:38:28.720 yourself on a daily basis. The second is when you do think about yourself, don't trust those thoughts

00:38:36.060 quite as much as you probably do. I call this ego skepticism. We know that our thoughts are often

00:38:44.140 biased. We often, we know that our thoughts about ourselves are incomplete. A lot of the things that

00:38:50.100 affect our behavior are below the level of awareness. We don't think about them. We can't think about

00:38:54.700 them. So don't take your thoughts quite so seriously. They are hunches, hints, hypotheses

00:39:02.340 that are often true and they guide your behavior in fruitful directions, but they're often wrong or

00:39:09.800 incomplete. So if you, if you just sort of don't take your own thoughts quite so seriously and use

00:39:16.700 them for guidance, then I think you're less likely to fall into some of these traps we're talking about.

00:39:21.480 You're less likely to be ego defensive. You're less likely to make bad judgments based upon the fact

00:39:27.880 you perceive yourself too positively. And if you can do each of those things a little bit, and I don't

00:39:33.400 want to hold out too much hope you can do them a lot because we're not designed that way. We were not

00:39:38.420 designed with a brain to live in the environment we've created. That's, that's the irony of all of this.

00:39:45.320 We evolve with a brain that works really, really well. If you're a hunter gatherer living in a

00:39:51.180 tribe of about 30 people, we don't live that way anymore. We've created a civilization and a

00:39:57.600 global economy where we just have to deal with too many people and too many issues and too many

00:40:02.120 choices. I am often amazed we do as well as we do. We have a lot of dysfunction as a species,

00:40:08.000 no question. But the fact that we can live in an environment that's so different from the one that

00:40:12.600 our brain was designed to live in is pretty remarkable. Biologists tell us that our brain is not

00:40:19.240 fundamentally different than it was 50,000 years ago during the stone age, but yet it's coping with

00:40:24.720 all of this. So if we just tell ourselves, we've got to do certain things to promote our ability to

00:40:31.200 cope with our current lives that we've created. And one of those things is to become a little less

00:40:36.620 self-focused, less egoic, less egotistical, and to lower that curse of the self.

00:40:43.480 Well, Mark, this has been a great conversation. Is there some place people can go to learn more about

00:40:46.580 your work? I guess just really two places. One is the book, The Curse of the Self. I guess it's

00:40:51.860 probably still on Amazon and my blog at psychologytoday.com. The blog that I have there is

00:41:00.820 called Toward a Less Egoic World. The idea being if ego and self and identity create all of these

00:41:09.280 problems, what steps can we take to be less egoic and create a less egoic world and lower some of these

00:41:15.920 problems? And I know there's maybe 15 posts on there. I try to keep up with it every month or so.

00:41:22.300 But that's psychologytoday.com. People can Google my name, L-E-A-R-Y, or look for Toward a Less Egoic

00:41:28.840 World. And those are written for the average person. With the implications, what do we do to minimize

00:41:34.920 the curse of the self? Mark Leary, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

00:41:40.860 My guest name is Mark Leary. He is the author of the book, The Curse of the Self, Self-Awareness,

00:41:45.140 Egotism, and the Quality of Human Life. It's available on amazon.com. Also check out our

00:41:48.720 show notes at aom.is slash self, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper

00:41:53.020 into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Check out our website

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00:42:35.060 this is Brett McKay. Remind you to not only listen to the AOM Podcast,

00:42:37.280 but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - July 21, 2021

The Curse of the Self

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