Self-Image Creation and Hygiene
When building an ideal self-image for yourself, it is important to revisit how our self-images affect us. Our self-images (i.e., our internal mental models of ourselves) have six primary effects:
• During social interaction, we subconsciously reference our self-images to determine how we feel about what is happening and what our “default” responses will be.
• When making major and minor life decisions, our initial emotional impulse will be to do whatever is in line with our self-images (these decisions can be as big as determining how you respond to a marriage proposal or as small as determining what to post to Facebook).
• We seek out activities (and information) that reinforce our self-images. Taking part in activities that reinforce your self-image creates positive emotional feedback.
• Our self-images influence the emotions we feel. We react emotionally to situations in the way we would expect someone with a self-image like ours to react.
• When we are presented with information, we can easily ignore and avoid processing information that does not conform to our self-images. This information will never be delivered to our conscious minds. For example, someone who sees being a communist as core to their identity may travel through a communist country and genuinely not mentally register evidence suggesting that people are suffering.
• When we are presented with difficult-to-ignore information that conflicts with our self-images, we will become viscerally angry and apply a negative association to the source of said information. Rather than process this information properly, we will immediately begin generating reasons why it must be wrong and ruminating on how much we hate the source of the information.
The first step in altering some aspect of our self-images involves acknowledging that the thing we have decided to alter is part of our self-images. There is no clear map of our self-images we can reference. Instead, we must build an understanding of our self-images by working backwards, using the above six points for reference.
For example, if you read an article that portrays a certain political party in a negative light and you find yourself getting angry and thinking about what a partisan hack the author must be, you have almost certainly internalized your political affiliation into your self-image. If, when scrolling through your online post history, you notice a lot of “intellectual” posts (and you had not consciously been trying to look intellectual), then being intellectual is probably part of your self-image.
As you begin to piece together characteristics of the internal model you have of yourself, you can begin to identify the pieces of it that are detrimental to your objective function. These aspects of your identity will typically cause one of three things:
• Unnecessary negative emotions
• Unproductive impulses
• An inability to process information required to help you achieve your objective function
The first two points are easy to recognize, if difficult to change. During the course of a day, if you find yourself reacting emotionally in an unproductive way, or say something in a social situation you recognize as detrimental, determine what aspect of your self-image lead you to react that way and then note it as something you want to change.
The third point is the hardest to identify as something you want to change, as it almost always represents something you like about yourself. You may become angry because you read something that ran contrary to a political belief you had internalized into your self-image, but you probably internalized that belief into your self-image because of a strong affinity for it. Unfortunately, it will be almost impossible to effectively spread the belief because if it is part of your identity, you will never be able to empathize with the thought process of someone who doesn’t hold it. If you can’t empathize with the thought process of someone who holds different beliefs, you cannot convince them they are wrong.
When identifying what you want to change about yourself, remember that just because something makes you sad, scared, or anxious does not mean a related element of your self-identity needs to be eliminated or changed. Sometimes negative emotional reactions benefit you. There is only one emotional state that is a universally negative: offense. Taking genuine personal offense to something yields zero utility towards any objective function and primarily serves to prevent people from attempting to understand viewpoints that differ from their own, (although one may certainly occasionally fake offense to one’s advantage).
You should be able to adjust your internal self-image on your own, with a spouse, or with a friend. However, if it is easier for you to work with someone who knows this model well or who you do not know, you can always reach out to us directly through admin@pragmatist.guide we are always happy to chat with readers in exchange for honest reviews on Amazon (haha).
Unproductive Self-images
As you validate your current self-image, keep an eye out for counterproductive elements that may have wormed their way into your self-image, several of which are summarized below. These summaries should help you quickly spot potential areas for improvement in yourself, as nearly everyone has at least one of these elements in their organically formed self-images.
As you read, recall that an attack on a self-image is not an attack on you, but will almost always feel like one. Our first impulse when hearing/reading that our self-image may be wrong is to lash out against the source of that information. We encourage you to watch for this reaction in yourself as you read through this list.
Failure or Helplessness as Part of Who You Are
It is possible for someone to build failure or helplessness into the core of their mental model. This phenomenon is called learned helplessness and has been observed in a few mammal species in addition to humans. For example, if rats/dogs are exposed to electrical shocks they cannot escape, they will not attempt to escape them when later given the opportunity. In humans, learned helplessness occurs when an individual experiences failure at a specific task enough times to internalize the inevitability of failing at that task as part of who they are. Unless they challenge this aspect of their identity, succeeding at said task becomes next to impossible.
Have you ever said: “I am just bad at X, so there is no point in trying anymore”? This can be in relation to anything from learning another language to overcoming obesity. If this is an explanation you have presented in the past, it is likely that you have incorporated inevitable failure at certain tasks into your self-identity.
Note: Learning to succeed at a task at which you have repeatedly failed involves more than altering your self-image to that of someone who can succeed at this task. You will also need to determine what other systematic factors contributed to your repeated failure and address them. For example, if you repeatedly end up in bad relationships, it is worth examining specifically what might have gone wrong with the common variable (you). Did you do a poor job at sourcing your partners? Did you vet them poorly? Did you act in a way that encouraged your partners to treat you poorly? Did you not leave them immediately when it became clear that the relationship had no future? (For a deep exploration of relationships, check out The Pragmatist’s Guide to Relationships—a sequel to this guide.)
External Locus of Control
A person with an external locus of control does not assume personal responsibility for things that happen to them, assigning responsibility instead to other people and external circumstances (e.g., “the economy,” “racism,” or “millennials.”). When asked why they are still single, someone with an external locus of control might say it’s “because girls are all crazy.” If asked why they can’t get a job, they may reply “immigrants took all the jobs.” Studies have repeatedly shown that individuals who adopt an external locus of control are less happy, less successful, less empathetic, and less likable.
External loci of control are uniquely difficult to shake, as in many cases, good and bad things that happen to us really are a product of external forces. Forces outside of our control may make life harder for us than other people but failing to meet this increased standard is still 100% our fault.
Perceptions of fairness often influence whether someone develops an internal or external locus of control. Those who strongly believe the world should be “fair” and believe that fairness has inherent value trend toward external loci of control. Those who do not view fairness as having any inherent value and who are comfortable with the idea that the world is not fair are more likely to develop an internal locus of control.
If you want to choose to believe that the world would be better if it were fair, then we encourage you to ensure you have a very good logical reason to hold that belief, because anyone living life with an expectation of fairness from the world will both be less happy and less successful in any conventional sense.
If you are systematically oppressed, it will be even more difficult for you to maintain an internal locus of control, as you must regularly confront the setbacks associated with an unfair world. That said, even if your objective function in life involves fighting systematic oppression, you will still be better off if you cultivate an internal locus of control, take personal responsibility for your life and circumstances, and accept that—even in a world with no systemic oppression—unfairness will be endemic. There is no conceivable situation in a modern Western society in which an external locus of control will help you achieve your objective function (unless your objective function revolves around being as helpless as possible which seems unlikely).
Though some develop an external locus of control in response to real, material oppression, most people with an external locus of control are not oppressed. Most people with an external locus of control merely refuse to take responsibility for their own failures. These are people who get dumped and blame it on the next person their old partner dates. These are investors who lose money and blame it on the market. These are entrepreneurs who fail to raise money and blame it on investors being too narrow-minded to realize their vision. A person with an external locus of control will always find a reason why their failures aren’t their own.
A good way to determine whether you have an external locus of control is to list the last five major setbacks in your life and the reasons behind those setbacks. If two or more of these setbacks aren’t your fault, you have an external locus of control. Getting rid of an external locus of control is extremely difficult. Conceptualizing yourself as a victim (either of fate or oppression) can be deeply alluring. Victimhood gives you power by allowing you to dismiss negative feedback out of hand, empowering you to accuse the source of bias or ignorance, and allowing you to blame your failings on anything but yourself. Victimhood allows you to feel like you are succeeding (in relative terms) regardless of your actual achievements.
Vice-Oriented Self-images
Beware of self-images that incorporate a vice as being “part of who you are” (smoking, drinking, obesity, violence, drugs, etc.). Incorporating a vice into your self-image makes it almost impossible to shake bad habits and can cause you to conceptualize negative influences in your life as positive influences. Worse still, vice-oriented self-images will make you conceptualize people trying to help you as people trying to attack the core of who you are and will create a perception filter that makes it difficult for you to recognize ways to better yourself.
Examples of vice-oriented self-images are people who see themselves as “a bad boy” and people who internalize being overweight as part of who they are as a person (e.g., “I’m fat and fabulous!”). It is not uncommon for formerly overweight people to relapse into old eating habits, arguing that they “did not feel like themselves” when they were skinny. In the same vein, someone may tie something like smoking or drinking to their sense of masculinity and feel less masculine upon quitting.
These kinds of self-images are uniquely seductive in that they turn a trait of yours that would lead you to feeling bad about yourself into points of pride. We would normally encourage such a recontextualization—one that allowed an individual to turn a source of negative feelings into one of positive feelings—if those negative feelings didn’t exist for a reason: to help you not kill yourself.
I need X to feel X
All humans are driven to give in to our impulses. This is why these impulses exist, after all. We have an impulse to eat so we don’t starve. We have an impulse to procrastinate so we save energy. We have an impulse to consume more of an addictive substance because it has hijacked reward pathways in our brains that are supposed to motivate us to be productive.
The more constant an impulse is, the more time we have to create arguments as to why we should give into it. Everyone rationalizes the occasional surrender a base impulse. This rationalization only becomes problematic when we incorporate it into our identities. Once someone does this, it becomes nearly impossible to permanently suppress said impulse.
Examples of people who incorporate these rationalizations include:
• People who come to see themselves as procrastinators
• People who argue they can only become creative/productive/happy after smoking pot/drinking alcohol/using some other controlled substance
• People who tell themselves they can only get work done if they take regular breaks (e.g., for social media, walks, whatever)
While these arguments are logically wrong, we are willing to accept them as they come packaged with strong impulse. If we surrender to these arguments enough times, we run the risk of accidentally internalizing these arguments into our mental model.
Fortunately, this is not a particularly difficult aspect of an internal model to change (assuming you are willing to challenge yourself). These illogical excuses can be easily spotted when you are actively looking for them. For example, when you are procrastinating, you know it; you have merely allowed yourself to lose the mental battle to overcome it.
A Self-Image of a Lower Status Than That You Occupy
It is common for someone to assign a certain social status or level of competency to their self-image. When someone’s position in society does not align with the status of their self-image, they will feel as if they are an imposter and that eventually others will identify them as not belonging. This is often referred to as “imposter syndrome” and is frequent enough—especially amongst high performing groups—that Stanford Business School must hold workshops on it for all incoming students.
Despite common perceptions to the contrary, it is rarely counterproductive to see yourself as deserving a higher status or position than you presently hold—so long as you are willing to work to attain the competency this status/position commands. Ultimately, choosing to see yourself as having a higher status or position than you presently have may give you just the motivation and confidence you need to push yourself and overcome your weaknesses.
Believing you deserve a higher position than you presently hold is only damaging when you maintain an external locus of control (almost no combination of mental models is more likely to lead to failure than a belief that you deserve more from life and an unwillingness to assume personal responsibility for your shortcomings). However, if you are willing to accept responsibility for your shortcomings and failures, it is almost always worth learning to believe you deserve better.
The Self-Image of a Perfectionist / Someone Who Does Not Fail Often
The self-image of a perfectionist or “perfect student/athlete/worker/etc.” is usually acquired after repeated successes early in life and is incredibly damaging. This may seem odd, as one would assume someone who does not see themselves as capable of failure would have more confidence and would strive to achieve greater things. This is not how this perception plays out in practice, unfortunately.
This self-image becomes damaging because the easiest way for such a person’s subconscious to ensure their reality aligns with their self-image is to ensure they don’t attempt things at which they may fail. People who see themselves as naturally perfect in some way will find themselves unable to take risks and ultimately languish in a life of mediocrity. For this reason, many parenting guides now advocate praising children for being hardworking and persistent rather than smart or talented.
If you ever find yourself not taking a risk due to the possibility of a failure scenario in which only your ego stands to get hurt, you are likely infected with some aspect of this self-image. This weakness can be overcome by actively putting yourself in situations in which you may fail so you become used to the feeling and understand that failure alone is not something to avoid.
The Self-Image of a Good Person
Establishing the belief that one is a “good person” is likely the single biggest mistake people make when building a self-image. The perception of oneself as a good person is nevertheless incorporated into almost every unexamined self-image. At a surface level, it is a good thing to incorporate altruism into your self-image, as it means you will experience more positive emotions from doing good deeds.
The problem is that self-images do more than affect when we experience positive emotions. Self-images also mitigate what evidence we are willing to internalize. If you place benevolence at the core of your self-image, you are unlikely to be able to realize when you are not acting with benevolence. Instead, you will begin to frame your thoughts and actions as “good.” Almost no other characteristic of an internal self-image—outside of explicitly creating an evil internal self-model—will create a person more likely to commit “evil” acts than someone who is certain they are good.
A Protector of the Weak
A role as the protector of the weak is a remarkably common self-image type in which someone views themselves as a magnanimous protector of the weak and oppressed. On its surface, this sounds like a fantastic self-image. Seeing yourself as a protector of the weak allows you to feel positive emotions from helping those in need. Unfortunately, as with the self-image of a good person, the perception filter this self-perception creates is not worth the benefit.
A person who sees themselves as a protector of the weak will create a perception filter that does not allow them to internalize that whatever group they have come to see as weak may be in the wrong. What’s more, an individual with this self-image is typically not able to perceive evidence that they may have been incorrect in their initial assertion as to which party was weak.
If reading the previous sentence gave you a flash of anger, it is likely that you have incorporated this into your self-image. You may be thinking: “obviously, everyone thinking clearly knows which party is weak and oppressed.” However, whatever position you have taken regarding an obvious victim, it is likely you know of a group with the exact opposite perspective whose views you dismiss as evil, stupid, selfish, fringe, and maybe a little subhuman just as they dismiss yours.
There is no greater defense to justify bullying, thought policing, dehumanization, and terrorism than believing oneself to be “the protector of the weak.” Almost every terrorist or censor in modern history was certain they were fighting on the side of the underdogs and protecting the weak.
Unsustainable Self-images
Watch out for self-images that involve something difficult to achieve or factors out of your control, such as the self-image of a professional athlete, model, or celebrity.
It is easy to achieve success early in life and incorporate that success into your self-image as your primary source of positive emotions—even if you logically understand the source of this success will not last for most of your life.
Even conceptualizing yourself as someone who does not tolerate failure is a dangerous move, as often our failures are out of our control. Avoid any self-image that revolves around transient factors that are outside of your control.
Self-Images that Rely Heavily on How others See You
It is normal to have some aspect of your self-image involve a desire to be respected or generally liked by those around you, but sometimes aspects of one’s self-image that require external input can get out of hand. For example, some people have ingrained in their self-image that they must always be the smartest person in the room (note: This is not a part of their public persona, as they are not strategically portraying intelligence; instead, these people need to believe that they are the smartest people around in order to feel happy).
This self-image inevitably leads people to make counterproductive interactions in social contexts in order to maintain emotional stability.
This self-image can be remarkably problematic in the age of social media. To determine if this applies to you, ask yourself: “When I post something to social media, why am I making that post?” If you post to social media in a way that does not further your objective function, you probably have some aspect of this issue built into your mental model.
Normalizing Negative Behavior
It is easy to protect ourselves from our behavioral vices by saying that they are “just part of who we are.” A person doing this may say, “I am just the jealous type,” or “I have a fiery personality.” Once you internalize statements like this you allow yourself to indulge in these emotions further reinforcing them, creating a cycle that normalizes the snowballing of negative emotional states. You only lack emotional control if you have convinced yourself you do.
Somebody Who Hates Being Rejected
No one likes being rejected. However, some people build into their self-image that rejection is devastating to them (rather than a minor inconvenience, which is arguably how a more well-balanced person would internalize such setbacks). Sure, rejection doesn’t feel great, but it also doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things whether or not someone else accepts you or likes you.
A fear of rejection typically emerges through a cycle of avoidance. In this cycle, an individual avoids situations in which rejection is a probable outcome. This reinforces the self-image of someone who is afraid of rejection and increases the individual’s anxiety the next time that individual risks rejection—which will only strengthen the aversion.
Fortunately, avoidance cycles can be broken by simply creating a hard rule during your next flux period, decreeing that you never allow potential rejection to be a reason for not doing something. The important lesson to learn during this period is not that rejection comes less frequently than one expects, but rather that rejection really isn’t so terrible.
Lower-Ranking Ideological Self-Images
Be wary of self-images that include a subordinate ideology—one that is not at the base of your ideological tree. Ideologies are hypotheses for maximizing an objective function. Hypotheses can be disproven. If one of your ideologies is disproven, it is in your best interest to discard it, which will be very difficult if you incorporate that ideology into your self-image. The only ideologies that are ever beneficial to incorporate into your self-image are those at the absolute base of it (i.e., religious ideologies).
For example, if you incorporate being a Republican into your self-image, you will no longer be able to internalize criticisms of the Republican platform.
In addition to blocking you from updating your position when better information comes along, self-identities shaped by lower-ranking ideologies make it difficult to promote those ideologies amongst others, as these identities prevent you from understanding their perspectives.
A person who identifies deeply with an ideology will have a filter on any information that runs contrary to their ideology, which makes it impossible understand the perspective of someone who doesn’t hold that ideology, as both parties will be working with different perspectives and data sets. Even if you are nearly certain that the Republican party is the best way to achieve your objective function, you will still be better at spreading that ideology if you refrain from incorporating Republicanism into your identity.
Individuals who have incorporated an ideology into their self-image also run the risk of interpreting attacks on said ideology as attacks on themselves. If you can’t help but get angry when someone criticizes an ideology you hold, you have probably built that ideology into your identity and should consider decoupling the two.
The danger of incorporating an ideology into your self-image increases in direct proportion to that ideology’s distance from the base of your ideological tree. It is not nearly as damaging to incorporate an ideology like your religion into your self-image as it is to incorporate a political philosophy or affinity for a particular political candidate, thought leader, or religious leader.
All the disadvantages associated with incorporating an ideology into your image, such as the perception filter and a lack of ability to understand the reasoning of those with opposing views, will exist regardless of how low on your tree that ideology may sit. For this reason, it is still not great for an individual to incorporate their religious beliefs into their self-image, as this will make them much worse at convincing another to adopt it.
False Alarms
There are a few aspects of a self-image that one may initially internalize as being negative and worth changing which are actually benign or even beneficial.
Group Association
It is common for individuals to associate their identities with an external group. When the group is successful, the individual gets a psychological reward. When the group fails, the individual feels as if they themselves have failed. This can happen with groups ranging from sports teams to companies and nations. There is some thought in pop psychology that this is not healthy, but there is no concrete empirical evidence to back this up.
Still, it is worth considering whether this sort of identification is beneficial to your objective function. You should be aware of how group identities can affect your worldview. For example, an individual who strongly identifies with something external like a sports team often has “successes” and “failures” in life that are entirely outside of their control. To deal with this fact, individuals will often begin to adopt ideologies that give them a semblance of control over uncontrollable events, such as superstitions (e.g., “If I wear my lucky shirt during tonight’s game, my team will win”).
It is also important to be cautious about associating one’s identity with a politician or political party. Demagogues are born when a large population sees themselves as being on the team of a candidate and ceases to critically question the candidate’s actions. Supporters who incorporate a political leader into their identities will see doubt in this leader as a sign of cognitive dissonance and suppress it, which will ultimately contribute to fanaticism and prevent people from withdrawing support from politicians who begin to behave in dangerous ways.
Combined Identities
One self-image that is often derided as unhealthy or dangerous—but is actually very effective—is the “combined identity.” Combined identities involve two (or, in very rare cases, several) people who conceptualize themselves as different avatars of a single entity rather than distinct individuals. We would go so far as to argue that for a married couple, a combined identity is ideal for almost any objective function (so long as the couple holds the same objective function). Once a combined identity is established, its constituent parts become more resistant to outside influence than stand-alone self-identities.
All that said, combined identities are dangerous when contrasted with other identities as there is the possibility that the identity is (1) unreciprocated and unsolicited (as with a stalker or codependent partner), (2) unreciprocated and downright predatory (as with an abusive spouse or cult leader), or (3) was formed under unstable circumstances (such as in high school). In all these cases, combined self-identities can cause significant harm.