How to Talk to People - How to Build a Happy Life: Don't Be Your Own Worst Enemy

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

In the social-media age, we curate images of our lives on a screen—making it especially easy to translate images of perfection as the image of oneself. But the pressure to pretend we are perfect is exactly the thing holding us back from experiencing the happiness we seek—and limiting our ability to be our whole, authentic selves.  In this episode of How to Build a Happy Life, we’ll define what we mean by “authenticity” and explore the psychological underpinnings of our ego-driven identities. A conversation with the clinical psychologist and mindfulness expert Dr. Shefali helps us work through one of the most challenging questions of all: Who am I? This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and is hosted by Arthur C. Brooks. Editing by A. C. Valdez. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Sound design by Michael Raphael. Be part of How to Build a Happy Life. Write to us at [e-mail] or leave us a voicemail at 925.967.2091. Music by Trevor Kowalski (“Lion’s Drift,” “This Valley of Ours,” “Una Noche De Luces”), Stationary Sign (“Loose in the Park”), and Spectacles Wallet and Watch (“Last Pieces”). Click here to listen to every full-length episode in the series. Try out this week’s tool-kit exercise, “The Chipping-Away Exercise,” and apply these lessons to your own life! Tag us on social media with #thechippingawayexercise, and listen to full-length episodes of How to Build a Happy Life at theatlantic.com/happy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is How to Build a Happy Life, the Atlantic's podcast on all things happiness. I'm Arthur Brooks, Harvard Professor, and Happiness correspondent at the Atlantic. People often ask this question, how do I find myself? And for a long time, I didn't really understand the nature of that question because, I mean, find yourself, look in a mirror. Think a little bit. You're inside your head all day long. But then I realized that, you know, people tend to be deeply alienated from who they consider themselves actually to be. And the reason is because of something that is defined in the psychological literature as self-objectification. Self-objectification is just another form of objectifying a person. It's just that the objectifier

and the objectifi-e are the same person. As a kid, growing up, my father taught me you should never objectify another person, which is to reduce them to a particular trait, usually something that serves you. If you ask, how do I find myself? You're basically saying, I don't know who I am. And the reason you don't know who you are probably is because you have reduced yourself to one characteristic, to one trait, to one quality that you want to be more than anything else. You objectified yourself, probably making you unhappy at very least. it's making you kind of a stranger to yourself, and that's an uncomfortable situation. You might ask yourself, what does self-objectification typically look like?

Well, it looks like you thinking of yourself only in one dimension. Maybe you're an especially attractive person physically, and people reward you for that. They give you attention, and that attention feels good. And so pretty soon you find yourself just playing up your own attractiveness at the expense of all your other qualities. You find yourself posting pictures of yourself on Instagram so that people can admire your looks. That's pure self-objectification, and that's really a lesser version of you. You're getting the reward, which is the attention of others, but you're desiccating the nature of your true self.

You're impoverishing yourself across all of the human dimensions. Maybe people give you a lot of attention because you're unbelievably good at your job. Congratulations. That's admirable. You've earned it. You've worked hard. There's a lot of merit involved. in that. I'm sure you're not your job. Maybe you objectify yourself as simply being a parent

or a spouse or a partner to somebody. Maybe just your relation to somebody else, that one aspect of your life is kind of how you understand yourself and you reduce yourself in that particular way. That's a form of self-objectification as well. And you're not going to be satisfied as long as you're doing that. You're not going to be happy as long as you're doing that. And you're not going to come to an to the question, who am I? So how do we get away from that? How do we become more authentic? How do we accept our true selves? How do we battle against this tendency to self-objectify? Fighting self-objectification, finding our true selves, understanding authenticity. That's our subject today. You develop an inauthentic self. However, it cannot last. Why? Because the authentic self, which was meant to develop, is a self that is

untethered to the external world, that is given the message that who you are as you are is the place of home. Dr. Sheffali is the best-selling author, mindfulness leader, and clinical psychologist known for her specialization in the integration of Western psychology and Eastern philosophy. She's most notable for her theories on conscious parenting, a style of parenting centered around honoring children as conscious beings, not objectified, and raising them into conscious adults by conscious parents. Her most recent book is The Radical Awakening, Turn Pain Into Power, Embrace Your Truth, Live Free, and it follows Dr. Schiafali's personal journey into a more awakened, conscious, and fulfilled state of mind. Watching hundreds of clients go through the process of transforming pain into power and then seeing my own transformation from pain to power really was the underpinning of this. book. In my own personal life, I was in a marriage for over two decades and found that as I began

to become more and more authentic, the container of the relationship needed to morph. And in some relationships, it can and in some relationships, it simply cannot. In my relationship, the container could not morph to allow the emergence of my new self. And then I was in a deep, conflict. And I believe many people go through this conflict where the authentic self rises, but the past doesn't support the present. And so I had to make very tough, torturous choices as a woman, especially as a mother, do I stay or do I leave? And I went through a tremendous shedding of old belief systems, especially as an Indian woman. I was raised in India, but also as just a woman in this current culture where we are given or we invite or we ingest

a lot of guilt and shame around being the quote unquote home wrecker. So I went through a very torturous inner process of shedding what that means and how culture has overlaid so much shame around us for speaking our voice, for holding our own, for taking space, because those were the things I was doing that my old container couldn't allow anymore. So I not only went through this myself, but this is what I usher most of my clients through, is how do you discover your authentic voice? So when you're talking to somebody giving them advice about finding their authentic self, what does that mean? What is the inauthentic self? And then what is the authentic self?

As I see it as a therapist and what I write about in my books is, when we are children, we are closest to who it is we are meant to be, as close to being unconditioned as possible. And as we are in the womb itself and as we emerge into the world, we are immediately bombarded with the conditionings of our immediate parents and then our immediate culture. Conditioning that literally starts from day one. Already you are born into a family. Already you are born into a tradition. With that comes its politics.

With that comes its religion. With that comes its ideas of good and bad, heaven and hell, God or no God, achievement, success, happiness, beauty. Everything is an imprint that we now need to plug into. In that process of being kind of forced to absorb the conditioning, we have no choice, we lose our connection to who we could be or were meant to be. It's just natural. And we realize quickly that in order to receive validation, love and worth, we better get whipping into this system. And in order to do that, there's a psychological process that occurs, which I describe as the development of the ego, the false self. The chicken needs the shell of the egg to develop, but it cannot survive if the egg stays intact.

This is kind of what I describe the ego as. We develop a shell of the false self to get love and worth in this conditioning in this system that really befuddles us. We realize, what, I can't just be. I have to now become. I thought I already was. The masks of the ego get us by. But eventually they begin to suffocate us and they begin to fall apart because they are based on inauthentic, primitive means to get love and worth. So you become a comedian, super achiever, people pleaser, over-controller, over-controler, over-

a giver. So we go, of course, really early. People have become so attached to that source of love and worth. They so are addicted that it's on the outside, that they have a list of 160 things, minimum, that they're trying to attach to, the cars, the shoes, the cosmetics, the relationships, the children hoping that redemption will arrive, but they don't realize they're looking for it in all the wrong places. And I talk about how rock bottom, that pain, is when the, The false self simply cannot make it in the world anymore. It's like, I give up. I have tried so hard, but damn it, I can't find happiness on the outside, and I'm exhausted, and I give up.

And that is the beginning portal for awakening, but it is the most painful point in time. If you had rock bottom in your marriage, then it must have been super fun. So what did you have to throw off? What did you get rid of? What I saw was happening was that my masks, particular rigid, sticky masks were the masks of the people pleaser, the ultimate giver. I had won the mask of Savior. I still have some of it in my marriage.

And I was here to say, hey, you wrote a book. You're saving people. No, I get it. Yeah, it's a double-ed sword for me, you know? But I was in the mode of savior my whole life, which really drowned me, which exhausted me and took me to burnout. So I never really blamed my partner because I was so attached to my own. role of saving. I needed brokenness. You know what I mean? I in fact encouraged it in my own perverse

way. Let's take a sort of a case study so people can really make this concrete in their minds. So somebody walks into your office and is having a first consultation with you and this is somebody who's a really like full-on self-objectifier. What are you most likely to see? You will see a lot of I statements, a lot of anxiety, a lot of anger, control, a lot of bluster because things are not going well in their life. So with people like this, which is most people, they typically come when expectations have in met reality or the other way around. And they are deeply injured by this fact because they feel entitled to expectations and reality being one. And so that's their first poke. Typically, I see it with parents, right? The children bring you to your knees because you were like,

by golly, I have wasted so much of my money and energy and given my body up for this creature. How dare this little one not bend to my will. That's why my first books were all on parenting because I was like, let me go for the obvious prey, which is the parent. And I gently help them deconstruct who they think they are and show them how they have enslaved them. to this relationship or to this identity. And if they want to live a different life, they're going to have to loosen that hold this identity has on them. And they begin to see suffering, suffering, suffering. This has caused me pain, pain, pain. The more I want it, the more I go into the labyrinth of hell. And when I show them in real time, ah, see, hell, see, suffering. So is this

identity working for you? Is this belief system good for you? Or can we look at another way of envisioning this. So it's a slow process of deconstruction, and I call it deconstruction, before we rebuild and allow. And people cling. Even though they know it's dysfunctional, they are deeply attached to the dysfunction, because the dysfunction now becomes your addiction. It is suffering becomes your reality. You're like, no, who will I be if I don't suffer? Who will I be without the anxiety? So now the very symptoms become the identity. Okay, back to Dr. Sheffali in a second. But now, a quick time out for science.

I want to tell you now about a 2006 psychological experiment that was published in the journal Psychology of Women Quarterly. The article was titled The Disruptive Effect of Self-objectification on Performance and it was written by four psychologists named Diane Quinn, Rachel Callan, Gene Twengey, and Barbara Fredrickson. In the experiment, they took a sample of 79. women who were aged 19 to 28 and they broke them up into two groups. One had to try on a sweater and look in the mirror. Another had to try on a swimsuit. So as they were looking in the mirror, they had to complete a questionnaire about their self-image. And what they found was that the

women looking at themselves in the mirror and wearing the swimsuit, they were, I guess you could say, self-objectifying and identifying a lot with their bodies. And it was a very distracting thing. Now, that wasn't the point of the exercise. The point of the exercise actually came right after that, when the researchers asked them to perform a little tiny mental acuity task, which is to name colors and see how fast they correctly named colors. Really easy thing to do, but the psychologists were timing it to see who was more distracted, who was more competent at doing it correctly and quickly, and seeing whether or not it depended on whether or not they had been distracted

or they were disturbed by what had happened before. Sure enough, they found a difference. They found a difference in the level of speed. the women who wore the sweaters were able to focus on and perform the task correctly better than the women who are in swimsuits. What they found was that basically naming colors or any of these easy tasks, these competency tasks, is inhibited by self-objectification, or at least the distraction that comes from thinking, I am my body. Simply put, if you want to use this in real life, what it suggests is that self-objectification, at least at the physical level, probably makes you a little less competent. And now, back to Dr. Sheffali.

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Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. So letting go of what you so innocently and naively were made to believe is now such a rude awakening for us as adults. So my job is to, with great delicacy and compassion, usher them to see it for themselves. Do you see the shackles on your wrist? Do you see how you are muting yourself? Do you see how you are giving your power away to your success?

Do you see that that is not the real you? And it takes time for people to get the blinking lights on their own dashboard. So as much as I talk about them as a them and point a finger, sometimes I may sound like a little bit purist or moralistic, so I want to apologize in advance. It's a huge wake-up call. You know, when I had it at 21 to realize that my thoughts are not me, And it's a complete breakdown.

You're exhilarated, but you're going, what the F have I been living? Who have I been all this time? I have been the thought. You help people understand that what they thought was the source of their security is also the source of their pain. And the subjugation they might be blaming on others is actually coming from within. It's like one of those horror films where it's like, the call, it's coming from inside the house. You know, it's like a scary moment.

It's in your best. Yes. And so, okay. So that, but it's inside, not your bed, your head. It's in your head. So, okay, so you're getting people to understand that they are the source of their own subjugation and the source of the security is actually the source of their pain. And then they start, you start to pull them apart from that. Tell me about that pain that people are going to feel. When they start letting go of the who I thought I was, the symbol of myself, when I'm mom, I'm Professor Brooks. You let go of that. How does it feel? What can people expect? It's akin to a death experience. You think you can buy your way out. You're like, come on, I'll buy your love, I'll buy your worth, I'll buy this, I'll get surgery, I'll do anything, I'll color my hair. Please, like, do not make this a reality.

So the first few stages of the process is tremendous roaring of the ego. The ego wants to stay. The ego's here to protect you. The ego's like, hello, you haven't yet developed into a higher cell. So I got to stay, right? So the more we try to go away by just conception, the ego is like, no, no, no, no, no, I have to stay. And so it becomes stronger in the first few stages. Very, very typical.

And I also know the ego is going to regress, get us to regress. So it's cyclical. You go through cycles as you go down the layers of purgatory. And I see people in a lot of resistance and a lot of pain. And then when they realize it's futile, like I got to let go, they enter depression. and a grieving, which is really healthy. Thank you. Finally, we add some feeling. Thank you. We're just finally going inward. But it's risky at that stage because many people could just capitulate to extreme lethargy and withdrawal and procrastination and apathy. So that's possible and very likely.

But the few that skim off that depression to go to the next stage finally can enter acceptance. And that's wisdom. So wisdom develops that we don't need to have fear. So I really encourage people to begin their psychological work as quickly as possible, you know, because then when that final blow comes, you're more ready to accept that this is an illusion. Let me deconstruct this. I had this really crazy experience some years ago. I wrote about it in the Atlantic at one point. I have a book coming out about this because it's just so on my heart.

I overheard a man on the plane behind me. It was at night. And so I couldn't see, but I heard a man confessing to his wife that he wished he were dead. And I could tell he was old by his voice. And a woman, I figured she was his wife. She's saying, oh, don't say it would be better if you were dead. This went on for like 20 minutes. And the lights came on when we landed in Washington, Dulles Airport.

And everybody stood up and I turned around. And it was one of the most famous men in the world. One of the most famous men of the world. Everybody listening to us has heard of this person. And I was walking up the aisle with him behind me. This is blowing my mind because I'm a social scientist. And I had it all wrong. I'm like, oh, this guy's probably disappointed in his life.

He never did anything. right? And we're going past the cockpit, and the pilot looks through me like a pane of glass right at the guy behind me. And he says, sir, I want you to know you've been my hero since I was a little boy. And he was, I turned around, and he was beaming. And I thought to myself, okay, so which is the real hero? Is it now or is it 20 minutes ago? And it sent me on this vision quest to figure out how all of us can stay off that branch in the tree. because he was, I mean, look, I know he was miserable. He was still trying to be the symbol of himself, and he was really old, and it was not possible.

And so a lot of guys that I work with, they're like ultra-uber successful, but they're prisoners of that success because you can't keep it going. And when nature says it's done and you're not ready, you're screwed. You might as well escape by yourself and get to a better life on your own, right? Right, but very few have.

that awareness because it's so alluring. You see, especially for Uber successful people, the ego gratification is too much of a trap. It's too seductive. You have to really watch that ego and watch that adulation and your attachment to it. When I talk to young people, my graduate students are in the 20s and I have a whole lecture I do on the Thief of Joy, which is what Theatre Roosevelt called social comparison. Can you imagine if we had presidents who talked like that today, wouldn't that be awesome? But, you know, social comparison is the thief of joy. I'll show them the studies that show that if you're doing social comparison, you're just make, it's an engine of misery. But, you know, when you're working with somebody, what's the first

thing tangibly you tell them to do? I become their mirror to show them what their own life is reflecting and that they are unhappy. And that's the first thing I need them to buy into. Because if they're not going to own that they're not happy, we cannot get anywhere. So until I get that, like, I'm an addict, right? That's why A is so amazing in many ways, unless you're willing to say, hello, I'm Stanley, I'm an addict. If you're not willing to say that, we cannot go to the next step. You have to leave the meeting. So that's where I go. And of course, I'm not, you know, rude like that, but I know that till I get the person to realize and accept an own, their own inner incongruencies, their own inner dissatisfaction,

well, are you happy that your kid is blaming you and you're blaming your kid? Is that making you feel good? Until they can say, no, I cannot go forward. And I tell them that. So I say we still have more work to do for you to arrive at your own ownership of your inauthenticity.

We don't want to own that we're not okay. You know, we are taught that if we're good people, we will feel other people's pain. So it seems to me that you've moved beyond empathy to real compassion. You know, empathy is feeling other people's pain. And the worst parents that you and I've ever met are the most empathetic parents. It's like, I'll feel your pain. And don't do the hard things that make you not your kids' buddy.

I have three adult kids, and they were not my fan a lot. It sounds to me that this is the root of what you're talking about here is to stop being empathetic with yourself and start being compassionate. Start giving yourself the tough love that you actually. needs. Is that fair? Yeah, you know, it's about acceptance that pain is inevitable, right? As that saying goes. So pain is the portal for transformation. So I don't take away people's pain. I invite it into the room and I'm going to wait for it. So I invite it in and then we're going to sit in it. So I'm doing the opposite of what culture says, which is to, oh, pain is bad or

pain, she needs to be appeased or empathized with. I mean, empathy is a lovely thing, but it's not the answer. The answer is, okay, feel it fully, recognize your participation and co-creation in it, so that then you can liberate yourself from it. So unless we fully are in it and conscious of it, we're going to keep running away from it. What's the one thing you want people to do before they go back to thinking about their ordinary, you know, work-a-day lives and whatever they have to do? What's the one thing you want everybody to do like now? It's to just begin the awareness that any cause of their mental pain is their own co-creation and begin to investigate that.

Or just go drink some wine. Well, maybe you don't have to choose. Sometimes it's helpful to have a glass of wine while you actually contemplate the source of your own self-objectification. You've given us a path forward to find the source of our bliss. through the mindfield of actually coming to terms with the truths that are characteristic of our lives. Hard to do, but it's a journey worth making, like any other journey that's worthy of us. Thank you for that. I thank you. It's been an honor. What a great conversation. Thank you so much.

Sometimes people ask me why I study happiness, why I write about happiness for the Atlantic and why I do this podcast. You know, what makes me so interested in happiness? And the answer is, well, it is fascinating. And I love sharing these ideas and lifting people up. But the biggest reason is because I want to be happier just like you. Just like everybody. It doesn't come supernatural to me all the time.

As you've heard in past episodes in this series, this is a part where we share a mini audio snippet from our listeners who courageously agreed to answer this question. When is the last time you remember being truly happy? My name is Johnny. I live in New York City.

I stay in my grateful mode, what I call my grateful mode for good health, a loving family, still affording my monthly rent. But last time being truly happy, I cannot remember. In fact, my usual sense of pride of not knowing depression and my sense of panic feeling I was depressed for the first time I can remember has me terrified. A series of recent events, my brother's death shook me to the core, COVID, the depressing state of our politics, facing my 80s accompanied with a dwindling lack of a sense of purpose. I fight this mindset every single day and concentrate on the fact that if I can't find a way out of this, My three daughters and my three grandchildren would not only be devastated,

but what model for living life would I leave them? The thought of failing to maintain a sense of purpose keeps me working on this as if working for my PhD. Truly happy, I look forward to the day. Thank you. Well, I hope you've enjoyed the conversation that I had with Dr. Sheffali. I know I did. I learned a lot.

And after thinking about that conversation, I want to give you one of my favorite exercises that can help you in your journey to stop objectifying yourself. This is called the chipping away exercise. Step one, make a list of all the ways that you wish you were different. Think about it and be honest.

Do you wish you were thinner or richer or funnier or funnier or more successful or cooler or more admired, make a list of all the ways that you think you'd be better off if you were different. Now, here's step two. Look at each item on the list and ask yourself two questions.

Why do you want each one of these things? For example, you want to be thinner. Why? So you can be more attractive. So you can find a partner so that other people might love you more. Why do you want to be more successful? More successful than what?

Well, obviously more successful than others. Why? Do you want to make other people feel envious? Is the jealousy of others something you're looking for? Be honest. Why do you want each one of these things? Then ask yourself, do you like these motives? Are you proud of these motives?

If you're really, really honest, and you've written them down, you're proud of them? Okay, here's step three. Imagine you had all these things on your list. How would they really be changing your life? Be completely honest, how much happier would you be? If you were richer, how much happier would you be? If you were more successful in your career, if you were funnier, if you were cooler, if whatever you put on your list, how much happier would you actually be?

This requires that you connect it to what you assumed would bring you happiness. So, for example, if you wanted to be more handsome or prettier or just generally more attractive or whatever, it was because you think, thought that somebody might love you more. Is that true? And does that mean that you would be happier? Okay. Now, here's step four. And you notice that this exercise is getting more and more uncomfortable as we go on. So let's just make it that much more uncomfortable still. You know perfectly that all the things on your list that you'd like to change about yourself would require resources. It would require effort and time and money and energy. And it would probably mean that you'd probably mean. changing your relationships and all kinds of stuff like that.

So ask yourself this. What would you be willing to give up to get these things from your life? For example, would you be willing to give up relationships with loved ones in order to do the work that you need to do to make a lot more money? Would you be willing to spend the money you'd need to spend in order to do the things to change your appearance that would be required? Is it worth it? Here's step five.

Think about who you really are. Think about the person you are that's not defined by all these worldly desires because the things that you put on your list probably are just accoutrements. They're just details. They're extras to make you somehow better than the real you.

Is time spent comparing yourself with others or acting like something you're not? Trying to think about adding these things onto yourself? Is it worth it? Here's step six. Think about chipping away these added parts, these inauthentic parts of yourself. How would you want to be different than you? Well, that's how you're not you, isn't it?

Chip away these inauthentic parts, and imagine that. Now, don't chip away the things that you want to actually make you more like you, I should say, a better version of yourself. Simply chip away the attachments to the desire, of the things that would make you a little bit different than yourself because you're uncomfortable with who you are. Now think about that list. Think about the list of the money and the stuff and the image and all that

that you wanted to make other people jealous with with those motives you didn't quite like. And one by one by one, look at that list and declare your independence from each one of those things. Here's step seven. It's the last step. Do this every day for a week. every day for a week and keep track of how it makes you feel right after you do it and how it makes

you act the next day. This is going to change you. This is going to make you more authentic, and I dare say it's going to make you happier. That's all for this week's episode of How to Build a Happy Life. This episode was produced by me, Rebecca Rashid, and hosted by Arthur Brooks, editing by A.C. Valdez. Fact-check by Anna Alvarado. Our engineer is Michael Rayfield. Please visit the atlantic.com to try out this week's live interactive exercise

and try out the chipping away exercise for yourself.