Think Less About Self

Thinking less about oneself is good not only for performance but also happiness.

Auren Hoffman thinks most of us are introspecting too much:

Excerpts:

people with high amounts of introspection almost ALWAYS tend to be unhappy. they become unproductive and lose their sense of meaning.

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Nolen-Hoeksema spent two decades showing that “rumination”, the (introspective) habit of cycling through your own feelings and problems, predicts onset, duration, severity, and relapse rate of depression. the more you process, the worse you actually get…

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the goal of introspection is to understand your strengths and weaknesses and to understand what you actually want in life. 

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a small minority of the population is doing real introspection. most of them are super quiet about it. they do the work, get their answer, and go back to building or whatever productive thing they can do in their life.

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a much larger group is doing rumination and calling it introspection. those people are less happy. the wellness industry keeps prescribing them more of what is making them unhappy.

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the best way to be consistently happy is to get out of your own head. stop thinking about yourself. that means stop thinking about your feelings.

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watch the happiest people you know. they are not the ones with the most resolved inner lives. they are the ones who think about themselves the least. they’re usually absorbed in a project, a craft, a problem, a family. their attention points outward and stays there.