Would you rather be the world’s greatest lover, but have everyone think you are the world’s worst lover? Or would you rather be the world’s worst lover but have everyone think you are the world’s greatest lover?
Here is another one. If the world couldn’t see your results, would you rather be thought of as the world’s greatest investor but in reality have the world’s worst record? Or be thought of as the world’s worst investor when you were actually the best?
Human beings are complex. The pursuit of admiration or external validation gives us energy to do more, after all, we are social animals, and we have a need for hierarchy. Problems come when we choose to focus on what others think and see versus reality.
We’ve all experienced this. I’ll be happy when…I get that promotion, I reach $XXX wealth, and I have X number of followers. Think about the moment of ecstasy when you acquired it and how quickly the flow began to fade.
A good mental model is to remember that success, money, fame, and beauty, all the things we pursue, are merely the numerator. If the denominator – shame, unhappiness, regret, loneliness – is too large, our Life Satisfaction Score ends up being low.
Nassim Taleb once said, the optimal solution to being independent and upright while remaining a social animal is to seek first your own self-respect and, secondarily and conditionally, that of others, provided your external image does not conflict with your own self-respect. Most people get it backward and seek the admiration of the collective and something called ‘a good reputation’ at the expense of self-worth for, alas, the two are in frequent conflict under modernity.
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