#181 - The self-conscious and the self-centered are locked in the same prison

Exploring what happens when you find it hard to forget who you are

Self-consciousness and self-centeredness come from very different places. One tends to stick out a lot more than the other. But they are two sides of the same coin. Knowing this matters—it can save you a lot of grief and confusion if you want to understand any group you’re a part of, as a leader or as a member. It can also help you understand yourself better.

👉A self-conscious person thinks too much about how she is perceived. She wonders about how she looks, walks, talks. She's worried about offending people and about coming across as something she's not. 

I've seen colleagues go through an hour-long meeting without so much as a word. In a more relaxed setting, upon asking them, I would discover that they were worried about blurting out something wrong in the presence of others, so they thought it best to keep their mouths shut. They didn't know any less than what the more vocal ones did; they were too busy making their way through the maze of perceived threats to their vulnerable selves.

👉Then there are people who would grab all the oxygen in a room for themselves. A self-centered person thinks too much about how her interests are being served. She passes every interaction through the sieve of her own interests. In doing so, her attention is directed inward, captured entirely by her agenda. For a large part of my career, I fell on the side of self-seeking. 

I wrote two sides of the same coin—what coin are we talking about? That of preoccupation with the self. Both species of people find it hard to forget who they are. Part of their attention, no matter what they’re up to, is reserved for themselves. That means less attention for the task at hand. 

Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi (pronounced Me-High Chick-Sent-Me-High) in his book Flow writes:

A person who is constantly worried about how others will perceive her, who is afraid of creating the wrong impression, or of doing something inappropriate, is also condemned to permanent exclusion from enjoyment. 

Permanent exclusion from enjoyment? Strong words. Not strong enough if you ask Margaret Atwood, Canadian author and Booker Prize winner:

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

In Atwood’s book, both men and women are guilty of preoccupation with the self, though with a difference: women tend to be more self-conscious and men tend to be more self-centered.  

Those self-conscious often confuse self-care with being selfish. As their manager or mentor, if you coax someone self-conscious to share more of what matters to her with others, she may be discomfited by your suggestion because she may see your suggested behavior as being selfish. If she does not feel she shares a safe and protected space with you, she may not even tell you her reservations (because she is worried about what you may think of her disagreeing with you). This is how martyrs stay martyrs.

If the self-conscious need an extra helping of self-care, the self-centered could do with less of it. Someone self-absorbed is the center of his universe. What he’s missing is empathy. Such a person is locked in his shoes to an extent that he cannot take them off and walk in anyone else’s. He’s locked within the confines of his own narrow perspective. Some may even call him narcissistic. David Foster Wallace, in his 2005 commencement speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College, thinks of this trait as a “default setting”:

…everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth.

A consequence of my high level of self-involvement in my early career was that I would sometimes be surprised at the turn of events. What would catch me unawares is the realization that my boss, the org, or my teammates weren’t naturally thinking of me. They were, as much as was necessary, but I wasn’t thinking from their viewpoints. So I would be blindsided by what seemed to be their lack of consideration for me. 

There’s a nasty carry-over to being seen as self-centered. People trust you less.

Look at consultant Charles Green’s famous Trust Equation:

Trustworthiness = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-orientation

The self-centered tend to show high self-orientation. Nothing is valuable in itself unless it serves you. You measure everything and everyone in terms of how they are of value to you. Most people, except those self-absorbed, see through this kind of a thing. 

The self-conscious and self-centered may come from different places but they're united in their tendency to be preoccupied with the self. Such preoccupation—whether bashful or narcissistic—impairs their ability to enjoy life. It consumes their attention such that they have less to give to the experience at hand. Both are too wrapped up in themselves—either wondering “what’s the world thinking of me?” or “what’s in it for me?”—to lose themselves to the thing they’re doing.

[Question: It seems to me that the self-conscious tend to fall into the trap of being bullied into sacrificing their own interests by the self-centered. So, we tend to trust the self-centered bully much less than the self-conscious pushover. But if both are preoccupied by the self, why should we not doubt the intentions of the self-conscious pushover too? Or does their self-orientation work in a negative capacity by stripping away assertiveness?]

On the matter of what makes it hard for the self-conscious and the self-centered to get out of their own heads, Csikszentmihalyi says: 

Although a self-conscious person is in many respects different from a self-centered one, neither is in enough control of psychic energy to enter easily into a flow experience. Both lack the attentional fluidity needed to relate to activities for their own sake; too much psychic energy is wrapped up in the self, and free attention is rigidly guided by its needs. Under these conditions it is difficult to become interested in intrinsic goals, to lose oneself in an activity that offers no rewards outside the interaction itself.

For both the self-conscious and self-centered, attention is constantly and rigidly directed at oneself. They cannot–do not–free up their chained attention for the enjoyment of other things in life. And how can they? When you see yourself as vulnerable, targeted, or as the center of the universe, you perpetually are in your sharp focus. 

Feeling threatened in everyday life can be exhausting. Those who can moderate their level of preoccupation with the self and get out of their heads have much to savor in life. 

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👋Hi, I’m Satyajit. Thank you for your time. I’m a decision-making trainer and coach. I write about better thinking at the intersection of business, career, and life.