One of the great causes of suffering is this maddening worry about what others think of us. I can go into its causes by pointing to evolutionary psychology and our hunter-gatherer roots, but that’s neither novel nor interesting. Rather, I want to delve into the asymmetry between what we know about ourselves, and the uncertainty surrounding what others know of us. Because at its core, the worry about what others think is ultimately a function of uncertainty.

The Problem of What Others Think
https://moretothat.com/the-problem-of-what-others-think/?utm_source=7takeaways.com

Or why the person you are with your best friend isn’t the same as the person you are with an acquaintance. Each relationship contains a culture of behavior that you oscillate between, which means that you’re constantly presenting a different version of yourself across a wide range of interactions.

Let's call this the quantum mechanics of id presentation

What this means is that it becomes increasingly difficult to know who you really are. If a certain version of you emerges with this individual, but in the very next moment you toggle another set of behaviors with another, then that means your very identity is switching upon context. And the more you have to maneuver between various projections of yourself, the more difficult it becomes to get a handle on what “yourself” means in the first place.
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The fatigue is not caused by the rigor in which your mouth is moving to talk, but rather by the constant switching of identity that occurs in these situations. It’s no surprise that alcohol is a feature of these gatherings, given that it helps to merge your identity into one unit for the duration of the night. Confidence is nothing more than the assertion that you know yourself, and alcohol helps do this at the expense of clarity.
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The ability to study your own mind is often the result of subtraction. It doesn’t happen by reading more books, listening to more podcasts, or having more friends. Rather, it happens by removing the influences that no longer serve you, and allowing the remainder to act as guideposts for the person you know yourself to be.

this one hit like a ton of truth bricks. Never has so much insight been captured in these tiny amount of words. it's closely related to the Japanese book around the courage to be disliked, which itself is a request to be more of yourself - the true you - all the time - instead of morphing yourself to fit the surrounding.

Rather, it happens by removing the influences that no longer serve you, and allowing the remainder to act as guideposts for the person you know yourself to be.

There's one more way to read this that I've practiced to some great success. It's to also remove the distractions of social media and screens from a certain portion of your life. For example, I've now practiced not having my phone / any screen in front of me for at least up to an hour from wake up. I make my coffee, sit down and read (or even better write my thoughts down). They've helped me just process the vagaries of life that are quite often left unprocessed where you are chasing the next swipe.