A Simple Way to Have a Good Life: Stop Thinking About Yourself So Much
Constantly thinking about yourself creates an anxious, brittle existence.
Quotes
“If you are having a hard time sorting through your emotions, perhaps you are spending too much time thinking about yourself and not enough time thinking about… well, everyone else.”
Richelle E. Goodrich
“The moral climate of pathological self-absorption – hedonistic egotism – defines contemporary society.”
Kilroy J. Oldster
“An ego unchecked is like a fire out of control. Keep it in check, and it can be a source of warmth for the soul.”
Jo P. Helm
“I don't care what you think unless it is about me.”
Kurt Cobain
What’s Going On
That was a lot of writing last month! We'll definitely trim that back in the future.
This has been a strange month. My grandmother fell again and broke her hip and pelvis. We had to move her into Hospice care, and from what I understand, she won't be walking again. We are all hoping for a peaceful end for her at this point. It feels like there is a certain threshold in life where there's more suffering than living, but our society fears death so much we think we must avoid it at all costs.
My uncle passed away this week as well. He and my aunt live in Ohio, so we didn't see them often, but I’ve always liked him. I remember one time we were driving through Florida when I was a little kid. We passed a truck, and I thought I saw him (he was a truck driver). I kept telling my parents, but they said there was no way that we had happened to cross paths with him on an Interstate when we were both thousands of miles away from home. A few minutes later, a trucker pulled up next to us and flipped on his cab light, and it was Uncle Blair. We pulled over and ate at a Shoney's - I remember having crab legs.
I've mentioned it before, but a lot of the adults who raised me have died over the past few years. What I call my "people map" is getting thinner and thinner. I suppose that's part of getting older.
Unless something has changed my plans, I'll be hanging out at a place we call the Farm with a bunch of friends when this hits your inbox. It's been over 20 years since I've seen some of them, so I have a strange anxiety about it. It's been a good opportunity for me to practice what I preach and focus on the fact that I'm actually excited, but my brain is turning it into anxiety out of habit.
Housekeeping
I got another post accepted for publication by Tiny Buddha called "7 Things I've Learned from Anxiety." I'm always excited to publish something with them, but it also comes with a sense of anxiety as well due to the sheer number of people that are in their community. There's something scary about having so many people read and evaluate something I've created, but it's part of the deal if I want to write things and put them out there.
I like to overcomplicate things, so of course, I did this with Substack. I haven't been happy with how little I've written for the free subscribers, but I have been updating and editing old newsletters for the newsletter archive. I've decided to delete the Newsletter Archive and publish the archives as free posts that everybody can read. It will give everybody a few more offerings throughout the month.
I had someone tell me they emailed me through jamesscotthenson@substack.com. I did not get that email, but it made me realize I haven’t heard from many people since this started, so please just email me directly if you respond to something I send out (james@jamesscotthenson.com). I still enjoy hearing from people, and I love getting suggestions for things to write about.
A Simple Way to Have a Good Life
There's a strange sense of timing to what we are talking about this month as I am headed to catch up with a bunch of people I haven't seen in 20 years because when I look back, I cannot ignore the profound selfishness and self-absorption that dominated my life for such a long time.
We're all self-absorbed because it's part of human nature, but I was a little more self-absorbed and a little more selfish than most people around me. I may be wrong, and it may be my ego trying to make me feel special (even if it's negative specialness), but I have a feeling that a lot of people who used to know me, especially girlfriends, wouldn't argue if they heard me say that I was exceedingly self-absorbed.
So, this month's simple way to have a good life is to think about yourself less.
This is a tough one in our modern culture. I know this sounds like something that old people say, but I do believe we are becoming more self-centered, more self-absorbed, and exhibiting higher degrees of narcissism and entitlement than we have in the past. I've read a few studies that bear this out, and we can all see it in our daily lives.
It's important to say that I don't blame anybody for this. Our modern society has destroyed the sense of community that is so important to us and replaced it with many things that teach us to focus on ourselves. This topic could be a book, so I won't cover everything here, but there's never been a time in human history where everything was so tailored to us.
An Example
I still remember having to wait until Saturday to watch cartoons or how you were just stuck if you missed an episode of your favorite show. You watched what was on, or you didn't watch anything. These days, I only watch what I want, when I want to watch it, I can pause it in the middle or download it onto my iPad to watch somewhere else. I can choose from shows all over the world, and the algorithms on Netflix and YouTube do a great job suggesting more things that I will like so I never have to get outside my comfort zone.
These same algorithms show me news and opinions that agree with what I already believe. Social media allows me to create and perpetuate the image I want of myself and share it with thousands and thousands of people.
Whether we realize it or not, all these things keep us relentlessly focused on ourselves, and we're seeing the effects of that everywhere. It seems like it's gotten even worse since 2020 now that we're piling financial stress and fear for the future on top of everything else. Nobody wants to admit this, but fear, depression, and anxiety make us even more self-absorbed.
Many people exhibit shocking self-absorption with the belief that they are owed something by reality or that they should not have to hear opinions and ideas different than their own. I often think about a young woman in my office telling me that hearing an opinion she disagreed with was literally a form of violence against her and about a student in the last college class I ever taught telling me that facts are oppressive. It's hard to understand how self-absorbed someone has to be to believe that reality is obligated to change the way it functions for their mental well-being. It seems insane.
We will talk about all of this in more depth throughout the month, but I want to be clear that I don't feel anger or animosity toward self-absorbed people. I don't feel anger or animosity towards them because I was one of them for a very long time, and if you catch me on a bad day, I'm still one of them. More than anything else, I feel a sense of sadness and sympathy for them because I know how hard it is to live as your own highest authority and priority. Constantly thinking about yourself creates an anxious, brittle existence that requires you to always be vigilant to ensure that everything is going the way you think it should. It's miserable.
A Practice
One of the best and easiest ways to chip away at self-absorption is also one of the oldest and simplest pieces of advice we're all given as children: put yourself in someone else's shoes. I try to do this in every situation, and it always opens up more space for me and how I see things and treat people.
It's easy for me to fall into thinking that I'm right or that the way I want to do things is the way things should be done. When I look at this and take some time to break it down, I realize that my mind often does all sorts of mental gymnastics to explain to me why getting what I want is the best thing. When it comes down to it, this is the central feature of self-absorption: thinking that what you want or what is best for you is the way things should be. It's an uncomfortable fact, but most of the most self-absorbed people I know are not malicious. They just can't see past the end of their own nose.
When we put ourselves in other people's shoes, we see how their perspective makes sense to them, and it helps us get a different angle on what's going on. We start to see that what they think might have its own merits, or we can at least understand why they are doing what they're doing.
When it comes to thinking about ourselves, putting ourselves in other people's shoes forces us out of our own perspective and helps us see there are billions of other perspectives out there. In every situation, there's a perspective for everyone involved in the situation, and they are rarely malicious or completely ignorant. Self-absorption and self-centeredness start to dissolve when they are put up against the fact that there are a lot of other people out there, and their own lives matter to them as much as our lives matter to us.
The good news is that if you're reading a newsletter like this, there's a good chance you aren't one of the big problems when it comes to self-centeredness. Still, there's always room for improvement when it comes to thinking about ourselves less. That's why it's one of the central teachings in every worthwhile religious or philosophical approach to life.
Journal Prompts
When am I most likely to think about myself?
How often do what I want for myself and what other people want come into conflict? How often do I choose myself over other people?
How much time do I spend each day thinking about myself? What do my thoughts about myself focus on most often?
How self-absorbed do I become when I'm not feeling well? When I'm tired? When I'm depressed? When I'm anxious?
In what ways does thinking about myself too much cause me suffering?
I appreciate you taking the time to read this. Over the next few weeks, we'll talk about how self-absorption is actually a burden that none of us want to carry, how the things we focus on tend to grow and seem more significant than they are, what happens when we are too absorbed in our own emotions, and how social media puts our self-absorption on steroids. We'll wrap the month up by looking at things we can do to get over ourselves.
Memento Mori
It almost feels unnecessary to remind everybody that they will die someday in our current world climate. I've noticed my conversations with people have shifted from reminding them that they're going to die and that they need to be intentional with their decisions to telling people to turn off the news so they can stop worrying about the fact that they're going to die today.
That being said, we will all die someday. When you know that's coming, you can choose who you want to be at that moment. None of us want to look back during our last breath and realize that we were so obsessive in thinking about ourselves throughout our lives that we didn't think about other people.
Thanks again for reading. I'll look forward to next time.
Take care,
James
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100% YES. Thank you for addressing this.