How (and why) to get over yourself (part 1)
Self-obsession and insecure perfectionism causes misery
Many people think that focusing on being your truest self and living your dream will lead you to greater happiness. You are unique. And because you’re one-of-a-kind, you deserve to feel important. In fact, you owe yourself this feeling of importance.
Right?
Wrong.
Past a certain point, identifying with your uniqueness leads to inflated self-value, loneliness, perfectionism, depression, and worse health outcomes. Inflated self-value even leads to lower self-esteem, not higher. And more people than ever are way, way past that point.
How uniqueness becomes perfectionism
Everything you do with your brain changes your brain. Social media and constant comparison leads you to develop impossible standards for yourself. The more you wear your ‘judging’ hat, the more judgmental you become. You can’t ‘turn it off’, because it’s part of your brain.
Social media is also about the crafting and control of personal narratives— the selling of life stories. The effort to control and curate our own identities leads people to fixate on their own personal narratives. Hyper-individualism is the necessary motivator for social media’s need for self-importance and curation.
The result is a perfect storm: people feel more unique, more important, more judgmental… and more intolerant of their own imperfections.
That perfectionism that comes from social media has lead to a measurable decline in birthrate. Perfect isn’t just the enemy of the good- it’s by definition impossible. Nobody is perfect- not super models, travel-happy billionaires, wellness influencers, nobody. But we’re exposed to it daily. Perfect is a dream that can be told through highly curated stories on social media.
In one study, people’s self-esteem grew when they looked at their social media profiles— but fell below baseline when they looked at themselves in a mirror. If you outsource your sense of value to a highly curated self-story, reality becomes the ultimate letdown.
That’s why more people need to get over themselves and escape their own self-story.
Your ‘uniqueness’ is a lie used to sell products
Modern American culture emphasizes the individual. Yes, there’s history behind it (the protestant work ethic, self-reliance, etc.), but much of modern American individualism expands on marketing trends from the 60’s emphasizing the importance of authenticity of self in your purchasing behaviors, equating how you spend money with self-expression and status signaling.
The ‘self’ became a shrine we worshipped at, and the ‘true self’ some kind of magical Platonic Ideal waiting to be realized.
Of course, we have far more in common with each-other than we do making us unique. But constant exposure to marketing and media asking you to ‘discover your true self’ leads us to lose track of that obvious fact and guides us down a path of self-obsession.
Hot take: Modern spirituality adds to the problem
Modern spirituality and heart-centered language positions itself as an antidote to harmful societal conventions. Instead they often amplify the very conventions they profess to oppose.
A focus on self-actualization, healing journeys, unique voice, radical self-expression and inner discovery reinforce the counterproductive emphasis on uniqueness as the source of our value. It’s the same as in modern marketing. The ‘unique self’ is the source of our worth, rather than belonging or our capacity to contribute meaningfully to others.
Spending all day focusing on yourself and your truths is, unsurprisingly, not good for your emotional wellbeing.
Modern spirituality also tends to emphasize the importance of freedom, and that obligations are a disservice to self, whereas happiness requires belonging, and belonging requires commitment.
(GREAT podcast episode on this, btw).
People caught up in the modern spiritual-industrial complex often wind up narcissistically intertwined with an authentic ‘higher self’ that doesn’t exist.
A fetishization of the divine individual paradoxically fuels a sense of superiority and low self-esteem exactly as social media does.
In part 2, we’ll explore how to see yourself less as an individual, get over your own self-narrative, and the benefits of doing so. What does it mean to be ‘just a person’, rather than ‘someone special’?
And if you accept that you’re ‘just a person’, are you condemning yourself to a faceless life?