Matt Chung's Site

Tag: mental fitness

  • On being liked: Being yourself vs betraying yourself. A four quadrant analysis

    On being liked: Being yourself vs betraying yourself. A four quadrant analysis

    All the time, we all hear the following: “Just be yourself.” On the whole, I concede that these words form sage and sound advice. In fact, as someone who historically shaped shifted throughout his life in order to conform to social expectations, I mindfully practice being myself every day.

    The act of being oneself is a topic over the past six months occupies a large portion of my mental real estate. Because I’m interested in this topic, I fall victim to Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (i.e. frequency bias), my attention antennae keep gravitating towards discussion where the topic of “being oneself” centers the conversation.

    In fact, this entire post was motivated by a podcast episode (from The Capsule, a London based dance podcast) revolving around sports psychology performance. During that episode, the guest (Jo-L) shares his perspective on having the choice to be yourself:

    “You can make a choice … People are going to love you for everything that you are … and everything you want to be … [or] they are going to hate you for that. Then, on the other hand, there are going to be like hating you for all the things that you are not, as in that you pretend to be. So like, essentially speaking, you’re making the choice between like …. you’re going to be loved or hated anyway, so you might as well be loved for the things that you wanted to be loved for.”

    In response to this, the podcast host points out even a more subtle, more dangerous aspect to what I’m going to call betraying yourself.

    “… or even worst, lose [a dance battle] cause of who I am not. Imagine changing your whole dance because that’s the RIGHT thing to do or the RIGHT way of dancing”.

    Overall, I agree and I myself will continue biasing towards just being myself.

    However, my curious nature wanted to dig into the notion of betraying yourself (i.e. “not being yourself”) and how I consider it to be quite a seductive position. Because there will be moments in which you betray yourself. Because there are moments when you will be rewarded in the form of praises from others.

    According to Chase Jarvis, he believes this constant betrayal happens to all of us:

    “We will all betray ourselves over and over again and the goal is to just do so slightly less and return to ourselves with a little more kindness and a little more awareness and get 1 percent better every day … the person who is a degree off who walks a thousand miles”

    With that in mind, let’s compare being yourself versus betraying yourself.

    Be yourself

    When you just show up as who you are, you might be liked by others. This quadrant, to me, is the ideal condition, wouldn’t you say? There’s no performing. You spend little cycles taking the temperature of the room. You spend less time evaluating body language and attuning to facial micro expressions. You are doing what dialectical behavior therapy calls participating, mindfully being in the moment.

    Of course, when you are being yourself, you may be disliked by others. This is inevitable, considering there are over 8 billion people occupying this earth. How could any one person be liked by everyone? That’s statistically impossible. Furthermore, every individual person on this earth is unique, according to Reiss Motivation Profile, which posits that though we are all motivated by the same 16 basic human desires, how much we’re motivated by each value differs.

    Betraying yourself

    On the whole, betraying yourself is more or less “masking”, being someone you are not. At the risk of being overly understanding (is that even possible), we all do this, according to Chase Jarvis

    “We will all betray ourselves over and over again and the goal is to just do so slightly less and return to ourselves with a little more kindness and a little more awareness and get 1 percent better every day … the person who is a degree off who walks a thousand miles”

    Now, betraying yourself can be effective (and dare I say, useful) in certain contexts. For me, personally, assuming we all betray ourselves on and off throughout the course of our life, I want to both give latitude to myself and increase my awareness when this betrayal occurs.

    Though we can betray ourselves in the short term, it is not, according to sports Psychologist Michael Gervais, unsustainable in the long term.

    “You contort to fit in. You sacrifice authentic expression on the altar of approval. You twist yourself into a shape that appears socially acceptable but it’s performative in nature. The response does not represent your authentic self. Contorting creates a temporary relief but leaves you feeling disconnected from others. Because you don’t share your true self, you never feel connected, understood, or embraced, nor do you become a trusted member of the community. By pretending to be someone you’re not, you constantly feel the pressure to maintain the facade. This can intensity the feelings of insecurity and fear of exposure.” (pg. 40; Gervais: First Rule of Mastery)

    Now, what about betraying yourself and being disliked by others? If being yourself and being like by others is the most ideal quadrant, then betraying yourself and being disliked is the least ideal, the most disappointing. The possibility of this happening sufficiently motivates me to shy away from this behavior: what a slap in the face to pretend to be someone you are not, only to be rejected?

    Summary

    So, armed with this information, how do I want to approach my life from this point? These days, I tend to choose “Be Yourself”. I’m someone who values high degrees of acceptance (i.e. two standard deviations from the norm).

    I will end this post with a little snippet from Steve Job’s commencement speech, which I’ve been memorizing and rehearsing daily, as if it were my own personal mantra. I wake up in the morning, verbally recall these words, and then from memory, try and write down these words. For me, it is one of the ways I am practicing a stoic approach to living:

    “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what’s truly important. Remembering that you’re going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You’re already naked. There’s no reason not to follow your heart …

    Your time is limited, so don’t go wasting it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other people’s opinions drown your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly to become. Everything else is secondary”

    https://www.worldometers.info/world-population
  • Book reading progress update on “The first rule of mastery: Stop worrying about what people think of you”

    Book reading progress update on “The first rule of mastery: Stop worrying about what people think of you”

    I often do not finish reading books that I started. And generally speaking, while I do value completing what I start, I also practice self-compassion and most recently in adult life, deliberately and mindfully moving away from the behavior of “forcing” (or tricking) myself to do things that I don’t feel compelled to do. Fortunately, I’m in good company and many others are like me; in fact, today there was a post published on Hacker News thread titled “It’s okay to abandon things”.

    Anyways, the book that I’m actively reading — in between reading “Sports Psyching: Playing your best game of all time” – is titled: “The first rule of mastery: Stop worrying about what other people think” by Michael Gervais

    I’m continuing to become more and more aware of my own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and values. One attribute of mine that I’m currently VERY curious about is my high degree of acceptance:

    the desire to increase acceptance from others and reduce criticism or rejection.

    This topic fascinates me because I feel — deep in my bones — that I can live more authentically and reach my full potential (to be determined) if I spend less time worrying about what others think of me. Looking back, for much of my life, despite obtaining what some would consider external markers of success — working at a top tech company (AWS), receiving an inventor’s patent (in software networking, purchasing my first house in my mid twenties — I’ve limited myself spiritually.

    Again, I’m becoming more and more aware of my propensity to check in with what others think before arriving at a decision for myself. Though I value independence and reaching conclusions on my own, I sometimes over-index and over-value what others people think …. of me.

    For example, before I had my septum pierced, I posted a poll on Instagram, asking people what they thought was more aesthetic: nose piercing or septum piercing.

    Though that activity was fun, in retrospect, I would’ve liked for myself to make the decision regardless of the poll results. I would’ve been particularly proud if people responded negatively and I proceeded in spite of the criticisms.

    In a similar situation, just two weeks ago, I pierced my nostril. But this time: no polls. No social media posts. It’s not that I’m ashamed or embarrassed by the piercing. Not in the least. This time around, though from the outside the behavior looks the same, I arrived at the decision completely on my own.

    This second facial piercing of mine feels different internally, in my mind, in my thoughts, in my body.

    I wasn’t anxious … wasn’t worrying about what other folks thought of how I would be perceived. Caring less might be a consequence of the fact that it’s easier to do something a second time however I’d like to think that part of my recent cultivation of understanding who I am played a role.

    And now, I want to continuing building psychological tools and mental fortitude and practices and rituals that will help address the anxiousness caused by an excessive preoccupation of what other people think.

    How I stumbled on “The first rule of mastery” book

    I love learning everything and anything about self-development. And one podcast where self-development tends to be main focus is Rich Roll’s podcast. On the podcast, he typically brings on “famous” guests who demonstrate excellence in their field.

    Sometimes the guests are academics.

    Sometimes actors.

    Sometimes athletes.

    The common theme though is that they tend to be “high performers.”

    And while walking the dogs at the park a couple weeks ago, I chose a random podcast episode where Michael Gervais was the guest. The dialog between the two of them really resonated with me but the main takeaway from that episode was that high performance tends to be hindered by fear of other people’s opinion (FOPO).

    As humans, we value social acceptance and try to reduce rejection. It’s an evolutionary trait that kept us alive in our tribes. However, the argument is that that sensitivity for acceptance has become maladaptive in today’s society.

    I learned that I have a high degree of acceptance after being evaluated by a Reiss Motivational Profile Master (fun fact: I am now also certified): I am about two standard deviations away from the norm in terms of how much I “care” about what others think of me.

    In this post, I won’t go too deep into behaviors driven by high acceptance but for now, let’s just say there’s a price to pay when how we behave or present ourselves in a ways to garner social acceptance.

    Favorite quotes from the book far

    I’m about 1/3 of the way through the book but I wanted to pause, reflect, and share some of my favorite quotes I collected from the book.

    “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves” (pg. 1)

    “Now, I had more positive opinions than negative; however, I found the negative opinions to be way more magnetic. They held more weight at the time. Being stuck on those negative words, as I see it now, reminds me of one o my favorite quotes. ‘One tree can make one thousand matches. And one match can burn one thousand trees.’ (pg. 3)

    “The sooner you fundamentally change your relationship with other people’s opinions, the sooner you become free. Totally free to be at home with yourself wherever you are.” (pg. 5)

    “Developing an awareness of our fears about the opinions of others is the first step to discharge the power they hold over us. Awareness as the starting point for change is not a novel idea…But awareness is only the first step. Awareness must be accompanied by psychological skill building.” (pg. 12)

    “We externalize our self-esteem, our sense of value. We see ourselves through the eyes of others. We look outside of ourselves to determine how we feel about ourselves.” (pg. 36)

    “They are less focused on the experience and instead perseverate on how the other person may or may not feel about them. In that interaction, the problem they are trying to solve is approval or rejection as opposed to the shared social experience.”

    “Care about what people think and you will always be their prisoner”