I would like to share something I learned this week after realizing I've lived a lot of my life where I benchmark my progress or regulate my mood based on the wrong criteria.

This overlaps with concepts such as the dangers of being a nice guy or failing to play the numbers game. Many of us grew up in a distorted social construct which we call high school, where if you embarrass yourself once in front of your classmates, or do something super cool, that stuff follows you around for months or years. This is a bad lesson to learn as it causes you to be very passive in real life, where people quickly forget your mistakes and your accomplishments in favor of people who take chances and simply move on when they make a mistake.

MAIN IDEA

In today's isolated world of social media people have continued their highschool trend of carefully curating which part of themselves they expose to the world, being careful not to make a mistake. Much like highschool, success on social media depends in adherence to this distorted behavior and therefore reinforces bad habits. Since you rarely have to go outside anymore to go shopping, movies, etc. it becomes easier and easier to have shallow relationships IRL and maintain your fake persona.

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APPLICATION

The solution - is not to expose all your mistakes on social media but rather to leave social media behind much like someone leaves highschool behind, as much of it distorts your social reward system. And also, to leave behind people-pleasing behaviors in your interactions with people.

I noticed in myself that when I was talking to the cashier at the grocery store or to the secretary at the doctor's office I was constantly balancing the goal of getting what I want from the business with the goal of not trying to not being a difficult customer. Then when I'd phone a friend I'd balance asking them for a favor vs trying to not sound desperate in my need for their diligent co-operation. The same thing would happen at family gatherings where the conversations are always kept shallow to avoid argumentation.

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These are insincere interactions designed to potentially save embarrassment or looking stupid , usually at the cost of moving forward and learning as much as possible about yourself and the other person.

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Conclusion

There's a reason you get out of bed everyday, and it's to get things done and to learn from your mistakes by fully expressing yourself. Don't fall into traps where you try balancing your own needs with not being a burden to other people.

Especially if, like many people, the amount of IRL interactions you have is very small, don't let positive or negative outcomes of these things define who you are. Winning or losing an argument with the 2 people you actually spoke to for more than 30 seconds this week is not a benchmark for your success.