Losing Myself To Find Myself

It’s a humbling experience when you recognize you need to change. When you identify parts of your life that simply aren’t working. When you pinpoint ways of living that you want, perhaps even need, to destroy.

Destroy wasn’t my first choice of word for this idea either. At first, I wanted something fluffier like “update” or “refine”. But then again, destroy has an immediacy and absoluteness that I sometimes find necessary when it comes to building a better me.

And that’s the focus for this installment of my patience series - building a better me; learning what will truly make me happy. Eager as I am to do so though, how can I ever hope to build something better in myself without first destroying what was there? How can I make space for the new without first clearing out the old? 

Nasty a word as it is, and as much time as it may add to the process, my destruction is part of my construction. The two are interconnected. 

We demolish old buildings and clear out plots of land to build new homes. Every innovative business was born from the abandonment of old models. Humanitarian progress comes when we throw away antiquated ideas about power and superiority. Heck, you even have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet 🙂

Now, on the journey of self discovery, as I seek to build a better and happier me, I recognize that before I find myself, there are first parts of myself I need to lose; approaches to how I live my life that I need to destroy.

And here they are:

DESTROY IDEAS. BUILD EXPERIENCE.

Before I do anything, I try to predict how it’ll make me feel:

I’ll have a lot of fun at that event. Working at this job will make me really happy. Dating that person will be like living in a dream. I’ll finally be able to relax when I make this much money.

Psychologically, this is a process called affective forecasting - when we predict how good or bad any given “thing” will make us feel in the future. 

I affective forecast a lot. Some might even say I spend most of my time in my imagination.

The issue is we are really bad at affective forecasting. We are really bad at predicting how things will actually make us feel. And this is as true for whether I’ll like the new dinner special at the restaurant down the street or whether being married will actually keep me happy and fulfilled. In our defense, we tend to get the general valence right (this will probably make me happy and not sad), but research shows we’re terrible at predicting the intensity (how happy it will make me) and the duration (how long it will make me happy) of our affective states.

For someone who relies on affective forecasting a bit more than they probably should, this poses a problem. But it also helps explain another problem - why my life doesn’t always feel like I imagined it would. 

As I seek to “find myself” and understand what truly makes me happy, my intuition is to rely on my ideas of what’s right. I think I’ll really like doing this type of work. I know I’ll enjoy doing this hobby. Not only I think I want this type of partner, but even I think having any partner will keep me happy and fulfilled for a long time.

Sometimes I’m right.

Oftentimes I’m wrong.

Living in my ideas of how the world will look is safe and familiar. It’s not a bad thing to have ideas of what you want and how you think things should be. But focusing too much on what should be or what I thought they would be distracts me from embracing what is.

The best way to know how you’ll feel in the future is to just do things. Build experience. Try the things you want and, sometimes, try the things you don’t. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be surprised how often you don’t know what will make you happy as well as you thought you did.

DESTROY PERFECTION. BUILD GRACE.

Coincidently, the only place perfection lives is in our ideas.

But we’re done with ideas, remember.

Morgan Harper Nichols has this quote: “How liberating it is to pursue wholeness instead of perfection.” I think about it often when my perfect ideas manifest into an imperfect reality. 

I won’t say much because I feel like much has been said on this topic, but a reminder never hurts: we are going to make mistakes. We are going to hurt people we care about. We aren’t always going to get it right. The journey of self-discovery is a messy one.

But then again, this is really only my first time out here. It would be kind of strange if I got it right all the time.

Building grace for myself (and for others) gives me the freedom to figure it out. And that’s all any of us is really trying to do - figure it, and ourselves, out.

DESTROY NOISE. BUILD SILENCE & CONTENTMENT.

When I look out into the world, I see a lot of, well, everything. A lot of people. A lot of ideas. A lot of thoughts. A lot of content. A lot of opinions. A lot of noise.

When I look inward, I feel a lot of that “a lot” in my head. So many people and ideas and thoughts and opinions vying for my attention. These days, anybody with a microphone and ring light can share their thoughts with the world. To be fair, I am one of those people - somehow convinced that because I have a computer and internet connection that my thoughts are not only worth sharing, but also worth being consumed by others.

That being said, it’s still a lot of noise. Almost too much noise. So if our quote is right, what “something” is missing?

If I may speak personally (he says on his personal blog), I find that I most often seek out “noise” - other peoples’ ideas, thoughts, opinions, content etc. - when I lack contentment in my own life or when I lack trust in my own ideas, thoughts, and opinions. I’ll use the noise to distract myself from my reality, to seek validation for my own beliefs, or to mask insecurities by manufacturing feelings of superiority in what I have and others might not.

We often claim that social media and mass media platforms are the ultimate expression of freedom of thought - no more suppression; all voices can finally be heard. But similar to what Naval Ravikant discusses on this Joe Rogan podcast (timestamp 1:16:43 - 1:25:17), I sometimes think that while we say we’re looking for freedom of thought, we’re truly looking for freedom from thought. Freedom from our own minds, freedom from our own beliefs, freedom from our own realities.

Destroy the noise. Get off social media (again). Take a fast from Netflix (again). Build silence. Spend some time alone. Quiet your mind. Get to know yourself. Build contentment. Try therapy (again). Try meditation (again). Develop a strong sense of self.

The African proverb goes “when there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do you no harm”. Many of us, myself included, are at enmity with ourselves. We are looking to escape the only person that we can’t. And if I may speak personally again, when I think about self discovery, I think that’s a lot of what it is - finding a me that I’m not at odds with, but a me that I am content with and proud of. That’s the goal. That’s what I want to build.