Perhaps the most famous quote attributed to Socrates is:
An unexamined life is not worth living.
It is undoubtedly true that to be a well-functioning, competent human being requires that we have adequate self-knowledge. We need to be realistically aware of our strengths and weaknesses, our skills and vulnerabilities. So there is indeed value in getting to know in some depth who we are as human beings.
The good Dr Phil postulated that there was a three step process to gaining psychological maturity, viz.
- Know yourself
- Accept yourself
- Forget yourself.
But if we are to be successful in this process we must ensure that we carry out all three steps.
Many of us don’t sufficiently manage the first step and never get to implement the other two. Such people become self-obsessed.
{There is an old story about an egotistical bore who has cornered someone at a party and spent a half hour relating to his reluctant audience how wonderful he is. But finally he stops and says, “But that’s enough from me. Tell me what do you think of me?” In truth for such people there seems only one subject in the universe worth discussing!)
But Socrates probably underestimated the difficulty of getting to “know yourself”. Part of the reason for this is that knowing yourself and accepting yourself are inextricably linked.
Therefore we need to consider how it might be that we can “accept ourselves”. As usual our egos help make this task more difficult. Many of us are unprepared to accept ourselves as we are. We typically would like to look better, be more accomplished, and be more talented and so on.
Now whilst we might have some capacity to change such things for example I could lose weight by dieting and perhaps look better, I could be more accomplished by completing a university degree or learning to play a musical instrument – much of what we are is determined by our biological history and social conditioning. These underlying determinants of who we are are outside our control.Understanding this is a great aid to accepting ourselves.
But when we try to evaluate ourselves the ego has its thumb firmly on the scale. Consequently our self-concept is grossly distorted.
When I was a child, my father, true to his Scots ancestry would often quote these lines from Robert Burns’ poem, To a Louse:
“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us .to see ourselves as others see us!”
And it would indeed be a great aid to personal understanding if we could see ourselves as others see us!
As the good Dr Phil rightly said, “We cannot know that which we are unprepared to accept!”
If I have a fragile self-concept, and as a result hide my real self from the world and attempt to project a different persona in the belief that that will somehow make me more acceptable, I will strenuously resist acknowledging any evidence that threatens this façade. We must remember that the mind is not rational but is instead rationalising. The ego will co-opt the intellect into finding ways to discredit such evidence.
It is empowering to accept yourself and put aside the façade. Erecting such façades is a futile exercise. It is like erecting a high stone wall around your castle to keep the dragon out only to find that the dragon has always been within! Whether this is a conscious or a subconscious defence mechanism it still requires a huge psychic input. Such effort will lead to better results if directed to more productive strategies.
In one of my coaching sessions I was trying to explain this to a client. “But,” my client said, “if people see me as I am, they may not like me.”
“Well that is true. But do you feel any satisfaction that what they are liking is not you but how you falsely portray yourself. It’s a bit like them saying, “I really can’t stand you but it’s a nice shirt you’re wearing!”
Robust people are those who have come to accept themselves as they are. Such people don’t need their selves to be authenticated by others. And as usual in matters psychological, there is a wonderful paradox that self-authenticated people are eminently likeable. Such people have integrity. They are the people that we refer to when we say colloquially “what you see is what you get”.
But let me say a little more about self-acceptance. When we look at a person’s self-development, so much of it (as I related above) is due to random circumstances beyond the individual’s control. So much of who we are is determined by our biological history and our early socialisation which are factors beyond our personal control. Therefore it should not be difficult to accept “ourselves”. We largely could not have chosen to be otherwise. But this does not entail a passive surrender to the status quo. Authentic self-knowledge informs intelligent self-development. I cannot change my personality, but being aware of my strengths and weaknesses enables me to better anticipate problems and deal with issues associated with my behaviour. Authentic self-knowledge reveals my skills deficits, which if I so desire, I can correct. All of this helps me be a more competent human being.
But then to “forget yourself”?
One of the most debilitating things I can think of is to be self-obsessed. Depressed people, for example, are unduly self-obsessed – not in a narcissistic way of course. They continually ruminate over their real and imaginary problems. They are often good people who are depressed because they think they don’t measure up to their own expectations. They are self-obsessed with negative thoughts.
If I ask you to think about the most enjoyable time in your life, I can be absolutely confident that it wasn’t a time when you were thinking unduly about yourself.
The Dalai Lama said, “If you want to make other people happy, be altruistic. If you want to be happy, be altruistic.” Altruism requires us to think of others and in doing so we don’t obsess so much over ourselves. It is a fact that a well-adjusted person doesn’t think less of himself he just thinks of himself less!
When you get the self out of the equation you can actually see the world more objectively, largely as it is, rather than as an instrument to advance your fragile self-concept.
But going back to Socrates, I think he was in part right to encourage self-knowledge (I presume that is the outcome of “an examined life”) because as I have outlined self-knowledge is important to our personal development. However it is a stretch to declare that an unexamined life is not worth living!
I am joined in these concerns by Social Psychologist Hugh Mackay. He points out that some people don’t have the cognitive capacity to examine their lives in this way. He also highlights that many people are struggling just to survive and such considerations are far from their minds. When I worry about having the wherewithal to feed my children, I couldn’t care less about quotes from Socrates! It is demeaning to suggest that the lives of such people are not worth living. That seems to me to be an intellectual elitist point of view! Those who have the capacity to examine their lives in this way are fortunate and may reap great rewards from doing so. But let us not detract from the quiet dignity of those less blessed who are just living their lives as best they can.