Self-Deceit

When Mark Zuckerberg first released the newsfeed, there was some uproar. People originally interacted with each other by directly visiting each other's profiles. You only got notifications when an individual posted an image with people tagged. Newsfeed changed all of this and there was a newfound anger as details that were once only found by directly visiting a profile were automatically pushed to everyone, and many people could find out what was going on with the entire platform at once. Steven levy describes the experience:

Inside Facebook there were calls to pull the product, but when employees analyzed the data, they discovered something amazing. Even as hundreds of thousands of users expressed their disapproval of News Feed, their behavior indicated the opposite. People were spending more time on Facebook. Even the anger against News Feed was being fueled by News Feed, as the groups organizing against it went viral because Facebook told you when your friends joined the uprising.

In the world of product design, these stories are countless. "Watch what people do, not what people say" is an oft repeated quote from the Lean Startup. There are countless articles on what this means for product design, but I'm interested in what this means for designing our own lives.

Can you trust your self image?

Being human means being imperfect. If asked, the average person says "of course!"

In practice, people get defensive if you point out the smallest flaw to them.

How many of your daily thoughts are devoted to understanding your idea of yourself? How much of that consciousness can be trusted?

Am I trying to seed you with doubt? Well, yeah sort of, but think about it, your brain is the most complex piece of matter in the known universe, and it's the result of billions of years of evolution. Do you really think you will be able to understand all of it in 20, 30, 50, or even 90 years?

If you think you know who you are in the short amount of time you've been alive, I would argue that's ego. Having an ego is nothing to freak about, but... it makes shit even more confusing. When you communicate your experience of self, you are often describing the person you wish they were, rather than the person you truly are.

If you can't trust your own idea of yourself, how do you find the right job? How do you find the right partner? What habits should you adopt, and which should you drop?

Designing life for the real you

Okay, so everyone is clueless, and there's nothing we can do about it. Shots anyone?

Okay, hold it there. Luckily there is an antidote to bias: awareness. Here are some habits you can adopt in your life to help you live more peacefully with the lies in your head.

1. Don't believe everything you think

This is a borrowed phrase from some monk I don't remember. If you are like me, thoughts come into your head, like flies to honey. Nothing wrong with that, but the problem comes when each thought becomes a passionate opinion you are arguing for at a family dinner.

One of the key goals of mindfulness is to adopt a more passive relationship with your thoughts. Just because you think something, doesn't mean you have to do anything about it. Like a car on the road, you can just watch it approaching, and then watch it pass. Thoughts, are just thoughts, they are a product of our history and experience, which are of course limited.

When thoughts don't control you, you cultivate a healthy distance between that pesky but natural human self deception.

2. Seek to understand how you are wrong, rather than justify how you are right.

Many of us are insecure, and have an automatic reaction to realizing we are wrong, as a sign that we are also stupid. Don't worry, this is also human.

A common automatic response in this situation is to justify that thought. This is one of the most common defense mechanisms out there, and I'm definitely guilty of it. However, this basically just means doubling down on your own intrinsically false perceptions of yourself.

Become obsessed not with being right, but with becoming less wrong over time. Once you relax into this assumption, you can enjoy the process of discovery.

3. Cultivate a friendly relationship with your ego

Okay so you sometimes get full of yourself and think you know what you're talking about. Guess what? That's also super human, and it's part of the gift of life. The fact that you sometimes don't understand stuff is no big deal.

When you have negative reactions to the realization of your own inaccuracy, your brain reacts with defense mechanisms and justifications, burrowing the deceit in like a tick. Allow yourself to be less than your expectations of yourself. Everyone is clueless. Who cares?

I have learned that simply labeling any of my over-confident ideas as ego, helps me live more peacefully with them.  Example: "Shit. Don't mind anything I just said, that was probably just my ego." (side-benefit: people respect the authenticity and self awareness)

4. Make loving fun of your all too human imperfections

We are all born imperfect, and we will all die imperfect. Knowing this consciously is one thing, but practicing it is another.

Much of self help is about accepting your less than ideal qualities, but... what if you took it a step further and rewarded yourself for seeing them. This is what self love is all about, and it has the wonderful benefit of giving you a more accurate look at yourself.