Who the hell are you? No really, who exactly, are you? So many of us men today feel inspired to develop ourselves because we have a sudden feeling that we’re living a lie. A breakup makes you feel rejected, like you weren’t good enough as you are. Or perhaps you’re the breaker, and you wonder what you could have ever seen in her. A career change, a life transition from school to the workplace, or a single look in the mirror makes you wonder who exactly it is you’ve allowed yourself to become.
In all these situations the common thread is the sudden realization that you aren’t who you thought you were or even worse, that you don’t like who you’ve become. In desperate need to get rid of this pain, you begin to search for solutions. Often enough, you inevitably come across the notion of the “authentic self.”
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Personally, I remember the first time I did because it fit so perfectly with what I was feeling. I’d spend my days smoking weed, playing video games, watching “adult” videos, and hanging out with friends who had no idea who they were. It became very obvious to me that “I” as a person didn’t really exist beyond the mindless consumption of media and soulless pleasure. That’s literally all I did with my time and I’m sure many of you relate to this. Just look at the things you do – vacantly scrolling tiktok or gooning to your favourite genres until they become boring. You’re disconnected from family, not really connecting with your friends, and living a life that feels completely meaningless. Be honest, do you even know why you’re here?
And to be clear, this isn’t just me ranting and raving about the collapse of Western society and the degeneracy of youths. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, has written about how 20-25% of US high school seniors feel like life is meaningless1. And it’s not just the teenagers. We find that in the UK, 37% of workers feel like their jobs are meaningless2. On top of that, 52% of 18 – 29 year olds think American democracy is in trouble or outright failing3.
Way too many of us feel like our lives are meaningless, our jobs are meaningless, and who cares because we feel like our political systems are falling apart at the seams anyway. As the world around us falls apart, what else would we do but mindlessly consume pleasure? And yet, when we think about it, none of us should be surprised to find that as mindless consumption goes up, our sense of being proud of who we are goes down4.
But again, what is the point of even taking the time to think of an authentic self if life is so meaningless and hopeless? I obviously think there is a reason or I wouldn’t be here talking about the authentic self. Despite the doom and gloom, I am actually very hopeful for the future. I feel that my life is incredibly meaningful and I wake up every day with a sense of purpose. I know what I need to do and I pursue it with a passion that I had once given up on ever having. Each and every one of you can find that passion as well. So, what I’d like you to consider right now are the two following questions:
1. If you don’t have an authentic self, does that mean you don’t have a self at all?
2. If there are people who have meaning in their lives, such as myself, is there something about them that you don’t have…yet?
Beginning with that first question, I think the answer is simple. Of course you have a self! You are sitting there watching this, you can look at your body, at your computer or phone, you have a life history, likes and dislikes, etc. – you are a self that exists. But, obviously, if your self isn’t authentic, what the hell is it?
You might not like the answer, but it is a self that has been defined for you by your mindless consumption. If all you do is take in tiktok, youtube videos, video games, and adult content, then…obviously that is what your self is being made out of. That is your life history, that is your likes and dislikes, that is you whether you like it or not. And, whether you like it or not, you probably learned that from tiktok. That also connects quite nicely with question 2. If your current self is being defined by your mindless consumption, that’s probably why you don’t feel like your life is meaningful. If that’s all you have to live for, no wonder.
I think I’ve made it clear that discovering your authentic self is an important step forward, but the question you should be asking yourself at this point is, “what exactly makes a self ‘authentic’?”
A Fragmented Self Trying To Find Meaning
Firstly, you already have what’s called a self-concept5. This is basically just your understanding of who you are, what you’ve been through, your likes, dislikes, etc. When I asked who you are at the beginning of this video, the words and images and memories that popped into your mind likely pointed toward your self-concept – who you consider yourself to be.
If you’re someone who struggles with anxiety, depression, addiction, meaninglessness, or just all around low psychological well-being, then it’s possible that you have high self-concept differentiation6. This basically means that who you are is fragmented between your different social roles.
For example, who are you when you’re with each of your friends vs. your parents vs. your grandma vs. a police officer vs. your classroom? For each of these roles or relationships you feel like you have a different self that you live. The higher your self-concept differentiation, the more you feel like you’re fragmented, the more issues you’re likely going to struggle with. Someone with social anxiety who people-pleases is likely going to have a very different self for each relationship they have.
One of the ways we can think of this is that within you there are many different mini-selves, each with its own role and function depending on what situation you’re in7. The “self” then, is the generalized “me” that exists across situations. I may be a little different depending on who I’m talking to, but I still have a sense of a me that exists no matter who I’m talking to. But, if I have high self-concept differentiation that means that I am far more defined by my mini-selves, than I am by the generalized “me”. Who I consider myself to be, the me across situations, is less powerful than any of the individual mini-selves that I feel I have to be.
So let’s connect these dots. Let’s say you watch a lot of tiktok. As you’re scrolling you’re exposed to a lot of different videos, opinions, emotions, you’re outraged, you’re laughing, you’re sad, you’re outraged at the other side, you’re romantic, and then back around again. Basically what you’re doing is repeatedly activating all of your mini-selves in rapid succession – this mini-self, and then that mini-self, and then this other mini-self.
You can see how the more you use tiktok, the more you’re differentiating your self-concept. The fact that it’s mindless means that you’re not bringing any awareness to this process. Just think about what it means to activate your outrage at this atrocity, this horrible thing from across the world, but then you just let it go without any real resolution because you’re on to the next thing. I mean no wonder things seem so hopeless when there’s no real action possible to change things for the better. And of course, that’s just with one small area of your concerns in life on one app.
At this point it seems kind of clear that these mini-selves are not the authentic self. And yet, it is precisely all of this mindless consumption that is not only getting us hooked on these mini-selves, but that is getting them sicker and sicker. Who I am is being thrust this way and that between these mini-selves. One mini-self fixates on this horrible thing going on in that part of the world. Another is told that a joke it found funny is the very cause of that horrible thing. And yet another is convinced that modern dating is doomed because it’s man vs. bear. Like what possible benefit could come from having such a pointless debate as man vs. bear?
As we get deeper into the consumption, we by default are getting pulled more and more out of the real world where our real relationships really are. The average person is spending just under 7 hours on screens per day and most of that could probably be described as mindless consumption (TV shows, movies, social media, that kind of thing)8, 9. Is it really so surprising to see this stuff associated with a lack of a clear sense of self10, 11? Is it really so surprising when we see that high self-concept differentiation is associated with low meaning and purpose6?
In light of that, it may seem intuitive to think that the “generalized me,” is the authentic self. This is that “me” that I seem to be at my core. However, often what we mean when we say “authentic self” is that we have good mental health, we do the things we love, and we spend time with the people we love. You see your inauthentic self as an obstacle to living those things. If you are being inauthentic with certain people, you’re acting in a way that doesn’t connect with who you want to be, the morals you aim to stand for, and the life that you want to live. You feel pulled into one of your mini-selves and you leave feeling like you weren’t being the “real” you.
That all seems to connect with the idea that the “generalized me” is the authentic me, and yet, I don’t necessarily think that’s true. Think about it. If you have social anxiety in every situation, that means there is a generalized “you” across situations that is anxious. Regardless of what mini-self you’re being pulled into you are still anxious. I don’t think any of us want to accept that our authentic self is this anxious, socially incompetent person, and so the idea that our generalized me is our authentic self doesn’t necessarily make sense.
With that said, it seems like I’ve done a really good job of describing how we’re inauthentic when we too often get hooked by our mini-selves. And yet, if we pull ourselves out of our mini-selves to rest in our “generalized me,” again, the person we are no matter what situation we’re in, that itself doesn’t necessarily mean we’re now authentic. How could it when we may not actually like that generalized me? In fact, you may have one mini-self that is activated by the right person that makes you feel safe and funny and confident, and now you’re in a mini-self that you like being. How do we make sense of this?
Well…you may have caught a bit of a hint before. I had said that we often think about the authentic self as who we are we’re living life well, and that we feel inauthentic when we’re not being the person we want to be. This is when we’re acting like who we think other people want us to be. What that means is that there is a sort of aspirational quality to the authentic self. It’s not just that you want to be the real you, but it’s also that your authentic self is who you really wish you were. But… if you aren’t who you wish you were, how can it be authentic to try to be that person? One of the self-development clichés we often hear is that you have to fake it until you make it, but how is faking it being authentic in any way? That’s obviously the opposite!
It just seems like you’re trapped in a paradox where who you currently are is this mindlessly consuming collection of mini-selves who aren’t who you really are and yet, trying to become who you want to become is also “faking it”. What the fuck is an authentic self then?
Finding Clarity In Who You Are
The issue is that you are coming at this problem in a completely wrong way. Your issue is that you think of the self as a thing that you can get to. Like somewhere deep inside, you can find this thing and, “aah now I have my authentic self.” Or, if you go out into the world and have all these amazing experiences, one day you will find this authentic self waiting for you in the heart of India or Japan or at the top of the business in a corner office. The fact of the matter is that the self is not a thing or an object that you find. It is instead a relationship you have with who you currently are and with who you aspire to be.
To help explain why this is the case, I want to introduce what is called self-concept clarity12. Where self-concept differentiation is about how fragmented we feel ourselves to be, we have self-concept clarity when we feel ourselves to be clearly and confidently defined, internally consistent, and stable.
In other words, you must feel that you can say clearly yes this is who I am. You are also confident in the fact that this is who you are. Your beliefs are consistent. You don’t feel like you have to believe different things depending on the situation, and this clarity is stable over time, it’s not changing. Now, obviously you want to be able change and update, but stable means it’s not haphazard or being pushed this way and that like crazy.
You can see here how my description of tiktok differentiating your self-concept by breaking you into fragments can be very detrimental to self-concept clarity. To be clear, self-concept differentiation and clarity are not opposites. I won’t go too deeply into that because it’s just not that relevant. The major point is that when you have low self-concept differentiation and high clarity, you are likely to also have high well-being. On the flipside, high differentiation and low clarity = low well-being
The more fragmented you become the more difficult it can be to feel clear about who you are. The more time you spend mindlessly consuming content, the more difficult it can be to feel clear about what you stand for. And to really drive the point home, low clarity is also associated with being more concerned about what other people think of us. If you constantly feel pressured to be a different person in all these different situations because you fear judgment, you probably feel very confused about who you really are.
So, if high self-fragmentation and low self-clarity are problems, then it seems like the solution is self-coherence, feeling like you can actually be yourself in any situation, and clarity, feeling like you know yourself and are in alignment with who you want to be. Again, “who you want to be,” brings us back to the idea of an aspirational side of the authentic self. You must not only feel like you know who you are and that you can be that person in all areas of your life, but that you are specifically being the person you hope you are. You want to be someone strong enough to stand up for what you believe in. At the end of the day, if you are fragmented, if you don’t know who you are and you are mindlessly consuming, then wanting to improve on any of those things is by definition…aspirational.
This of course, calls forth a paradox that I’ve alluded to throughout this piece – the paradox between self-acceptance and self-improvement. The two seem to contradict each other. If we accept ourselves, then why improve ourselves? If we improve ourselves, does that not mean that we’ve rejected some part of ourselves as deficient in some way? Why else improve upon it? And yet, what happens when you accept yourself more than you did yesterday? You improved in your ability to self-accept. What happens when you improve in your ability to stand up for yourself and live by your values? You’re now actually living up to who you currently hope to be and what you currently value.
I think it’s obvious that this can go very deep, and I’ll likely have a future video on this specific paradox between acceptance and improvement, but the point is, our authentic self is dependent on us both accepting who we currently are and being committed to improving ourselves as a person. People who feel like they can be themselves and who are clear about who they are, are more likely to be both self-accepting and self-improving. They’re also more likely to have purpose in life, feel connected with people, and to feel like they’re their own person. All the things I’ve been saying that mindless consumption has robbed you of, are all the things you get when you become less fragmented and clearer about who you are.
The Authentic Self
So, let’s sum up everything we’ve discussed so far:
1. The authentic self is one that is coherent. You feel like you can be the same person in every situation. This doesn’t mean that you don’t respect social convention. You act appropriately, but you don’t feel like you have to be a different person.
2. The authentic self is also clear about who it is. You know who you are and what you stand for. You’re also self-accepting, and I think this is a very important part. We often think that mental health is the same as happiness, but mentally healthy people can sometimes be sad or anxious. You need to be okay with your ups and downs, and not judge yourself too harshly.
3. And finally, the authentic person is aspirational. You not only want to feel like you’re capable of improving, but you feel like you really are improving in ways that matter to you. It can’t be improvement based on my definition or anyone else’s definition. It has to be your own definition of better.
Now, with all of that being said, the really big point that I think ties all of this together, is that there is no authentic self that you’re going to find. There is no destination. Instead, your authentic self is one that you are continually creating and changing. I think a lot of people who hear about self-development get turned off because they feel so much pressure to constantly become a better, more successful person. I don’t necessarily think that’s what self-development means, it certainly can be, but my primary point is that you are always changing, you are always developing. If you’re spending an average of 7 hours per day staring into a screen, then you are already changing based on how all of that mostly mindless content is influencing you. If that’s how you spend your time, then that’s how you define your self and your life.
So, if you’re always changing regardless, then it seems obvious to say that the authentic self is one that has taken its own development into its own hands. The authentic self, then, is a process in which we take ownership over ourselves so that we can become the person we want to be and live the life we want to live. If you aren’t taking ownership over that process, then someone else is. Likely enough, that’s a business that wants you to spend all of your time and attention focused on their product, whether that’s tiktok, youtube, or anything else that robs you of your limited time to be alive.
I think I’ve made it clear at this point what the authentic self actually is and why you should spend a little bit of time figuring out what that is for you. However, that raises the question, how do you actually figure it out? First and foremost we want to understand the difference between rumination and self-curiosity. While both are directed toward the self, we’re either ruminating about some bad memory or interpretation, or we’re curiously investigating ourselves. Often therapy gets a bad rap because it can sometimes become constantly thinking about how everything is going wrong in your life and how awful you feel13. That’s rumination, so in any process of self-exploration, we want to be curious without ruminating.
As you explore yourself with a sort of intellectual curiosity, you want to start getting a clear sense of who you are and what you stand for. If you’re someone truly dedicated to living the best life you can, then I recommend that you take some time as soon as this video is done to answer the following questions:
1. What kind of man do I want to become?
2. What do I stand for?
3. How can I stand up for it in better ways?
Having a daily or almost daily journaling practice is extremely beneficial. You want to take the time to get a handle on yourself by going over the things that happened, getting a sense of your personal view on it, and creating actionable strategies to better represent that view moving forward.
With that said, understand that there are many other ways to work on this problem of living from an inauthentic self, and how that’s related to a lack of purpose and meaning in life. The point of this episode today was not only to define what the authentic self is, but to give several hints at the direction this channel is going to go. If you’d like a more explicit look at that then I recommend reading the introductory essay for this substack.
Otherwise, thank you so much for your time and attention. Please hit the like button and subscribe for more videos and conversations that go very deeply into the nature of self-development, meaning, and masculinity. Please stay tuned for more and I wish you all the best on whatever journey you find your self on.
References:
1 - Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Penguin Press.
2 – 37% of British workers think their jobs are meaningless | YouGov. (n.d.). Retrieved July 21, 2024, from https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/13005-british-jobs-meaningless
3 - 42nd Edition—Fall 2021 | The Institute of Politics at Harvard University. (2021). https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/42nd-edition-fall-2021
4 – Alfonso-Fuertes, I., Alvarez-Mon, M. A., Sanchez Del Hoyo, R., Ortega, M. A., Alvarez-Mon, M., & Molina-Ruiz, R. M. (2023). Time Spent on Instagram and Body Image, Self-esteem, and Physical Comparison Among Young Adults in Spain: Observational Study. JMIR Formative Research, 7, e42207. https://doi.org/10.2196/42207
5 – Ackerman, C. E. (2018). What is Self-Concept Theory? A Psychologist Explains. PositivePsychology.Com. https://positivepsychology.com/self-concept/
6 – Diehl, M., & Hay, E. L. (2011). SELF-CONCEPT DIFFERENTIATION AND SELF-CONCEPT CLARITY ACROSS ADULTHOOD: ASSOCIATIONS WITH AGE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING. International Journal of Aging & Human Development, 73(2), 125–152.
7 – Henriques, G., Mastropietro, C., & Vervaeke, J. (2021). The Elusive I - Part 5.
8 – Average Screen Time Statistics. (2023). What’s The Big Data? https://whatsthebigdata.com/average-screen-time-stats/
9 – Digital 2024: Global Overview Report. (2024). DataReportal – Global Digital Insights. https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2024-global-overview-report
10 – Fullwood, C., James, B. M., & Chen-Wilson, C.-H. J. (2016). Self-Concept Clarity and Online Self-Presentation in Adolescents. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, 19(12), 716–720. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2015.0623
11 – How the Internet Effects Personal Identity | Applied Social Psychology (ASP). (n.d.). Retrieved July 21, 2024, from https://sites.psu.edu/aspsy/2018/03/16/how-the-internet-effects-personal-identity/
12 – Campbell, J. D., Trapnell, P. D., Heine, S. J., Katz, I. M., Lavallee, L. F., & Lehman, D. R. (1996). Self-concept clarity: Measurement, personality correlates, and cultural boundaries. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(1), 141–156. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.1.141
13 – Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up: Shrier, Abigail: 9780593542927: Books—Amazon.ca. (n.d.). Retrieved July 21, 2024, from https://www.amazon.ca/Bad-Therapy-Kids-Arent-Growing/dp/0593542924/