The dilution of self

Happy Sunday to everyone.

Apologies for a semi-serious message today. I've had multiple trips in the past few weeks and that always gives me lots of deep work time. Especially when I'm stuck in airport for 12+ hours.

Last night I finished the series “Offroad” on Netflix. It features two celebrities from Israel that decide to take a month long journey, in a jeep, through Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

The celebrities, Lior and Rotem, met years before while shooting a popular series named “Fauda.” Lior is my age, 51, and Rotem is 40. Lior has a wife and kids, as Rotem has a husband and kids. 

Offroad is well worth the watch. 

Like similar shows, the participants are going on this journey to take a break from life and find themselves. 

I seem to be drawn to those types of shows. My favorite show of all time, the Long Way series with Ewan McGregor and Charley Bormann, is of a similar vein. 

I’d summarize these shows, and my interest in them, with one word - escapism.

In the grand scheme of things, most of our lives aren’t that bad. Most of us have more than the basics. In fact, many of us have cars, homes, clothes, etc. that are expensive by most comparisons. 

We don’t lack the necessities. In reality, we have a surplus. Yet, we still aren’t content. 

Why is that? What is it about the modern world that is so lacking to so many people?

I don’t think it’s a matter of one big decision in our lives that got us here. 

I think it’s more likely that a series of decisions, added up over time, that got us in a situation where we feel unable to do something about our unhappiness. 

There are two places we see this - our personal and professional lives.  

Up until around high school life is pretty simple. There are very few responsibilities and we have boundless energy to pursue the things that matter to us. Which are usually time with our friends and family. Life is all about having fun. Life is all about self. 

Then high school hits. Our hormones rage and we become different people. We don’t “play,” in the normal sense of the word, anymore. If we do play it’s only things that our friends enjoy and think are cool. What was once being care free has turned into always caring about what other people think about our car, our clothes, who we date, etc. 

It’s purely biological. Around that age our bodies are ready to start mating. So, we have to care about how mates view us. That means competition with people from the same gender, so we also have to care what they think about us because we need friends to have our backs. 

All of that adds up to loss of self, or who we really are. We’ve become some crazy concoction of who we want to be, not who we really are, and who our family and friends see us as. Call it self++ (1st + = family; 2nd = friends).

Next, self gets diluted even more gets more when we start working. Because we have to work for resources, we trade some of our selves for those resources. Our brains are already full of what others think about us, and now we have to adjust who we are even more to satisfy an employer. That employer gets to tell us what to wear, owns our schedule, controls who we work with/report to, what we work on, and more.  To make it worse, this phase comes right about the time we have reached the ability to be self-sufficient. 

In about a decade, from when we are start talking/walking/etc., we go from self -> self++ -> self+++. 

I haven’t even touched on our need to change who we are for mates. So, in reality it’s self -> self+++ -> self++++. 

So, what really happened?

Dilution of self takes over right about the time that we start to figure out who we really are. 

It’s loss of self from a thousand little decisions. We wake up one day and wonder how we got where we are and the only way to find yourself again is to escape EVERYTHING.

Which makes things worse. Because some of your true self may be served by the things you are escaping from. Like having kids you love or a spouse that is right for you or a job where you get to realize your natural gifts. 

In fact, you may only have a few things that are getting in the way of your true self. But, removing those non-self cancer cells requires expert, precision microsurgery. Which next to no one is good at. So, we blow up EVERYTHING. Or, we do nothing. 

Getting to solid ground for "self" doesn't mean you have to erase the pluses (++++).

If you are struggling with a dilution of self, here's my advice.

1) Take some time to yourself. I'm not talking about an hour. I'm talking about a day, or even a few days. I have co-worker who regularly goes on solo back-country hikes. He has an important job, a full family, and everything else that you think is stopping you from doing this. He pulls it off, so can you.

2) Don't focus on "finding yourself." Focus on remembering who you are/were. Although we do evolve as we get older, I've learned over the years that life is not just about identifying who I am today but just as much about remember the things that used to bring me joy but that I just let slip away. For example, I got into running because of my wife. After a 50% herniation of a disc in my back I gave up on running. But I've recently picked running back up, after a few years of strengthening my core and improving my flexibility/mobility. Even just a short jog reminds me how much I love it.

3) Eat the elephant, don't jump off the hamster wheel. My wife and I talk about the hamster wheel of life a lot. I'm known for saying that the only way off is to jump, e.g. blow up everything. But the truth is that you can "eat the elephant" by taking small, incremental steps back towards a life where your self is content. I'm talking about micro-steps. Get rid of that one shirt you haven't worn in years that is taking up space in your head. Do that simple home renovation project that you've been thinking about but have been afraid to start. For us its the lights in our garage (ANOTHER blown ballast).

4) Talk to people you trust. Talk to people whose opinion's you value and trust (not just anyway) and ask them when they have seen you at your happiest. I just noticed this last night with my wife. One of the things we do together is watch shows. There is one particular type of show, reality, where she seems the most engaged and relaxed. It doesn't make sense to me, but if watching a reality show gives her a few moments of mental piece then I'm all for it. For me, it's writing. Which I am reminded of in this very moment. I spent the morning "relaxing" playing some games. But right after lunch I noticed that I was getting restless. So, I decided to write. Because I know its one of my happy places and everyone that knows me has noticed it.

5) Do deep work. Pray. Meditate. Journal. Give your brain time to sit in silence. Some of my best work comes when I don't fight how I am feeling so much and I just give myself time to reflect. For me that looks like taking time to mediate, pray, and then, after those, journal about the things on my mind. You could say this post is a version of that.

That's really what I want to leave you with - don't fight things so much. Lean into them. Let them be what they are. Feeling anxious? Ok, no big deal. It will eventually pass. Feeling frustrated? Take the next smallest action. Feeling like you have lost yourself along the way? Go hunting for one little piece of the old you that you've forgotten.

Because, I know he/she is in there. You just need the room to look.

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