Building a Sense of Self

Once we feel like our needs are met most of the time, we then have the time and space to explore.

Enter “exploration mode.”

Instead of our identity being a blur of good or bad facts about ourselves, we have the luxury to collect evidence about ourselves over time, and organize that evidence into a more cohesive and stable identity.

This model of our identity starts off small, and builds in depth and nuance over time.

The goal of exploration is accuracy: the more accurate our model, the more effectively we navigate the world, meet our needs, and minimize surprises.

As this model expands, there emerges a sense of “ME” as a stable thing that exists. Some miraculous things start to occur.

• A more stable model of self over time allows us to more clearly see the boundary between ourselves and others, in a process known as individuation

• Because we are less threatened, our bias for action is reduced. We start to have space to think before we act, building a sense of agency.

• As we see ourselves as an entity that persists over time, we become aware of the consequences of our actions today for our selves tomorrow. We start to internalize the trade-off between short term and long term reward, and discount less the impact of our actions today on our future selves.

• With this sense of agency and persistence over time, we start to become the subjects of our lives, not just objects. Our models of ourselves (and others) are no longer just “good” and “bad”, but we begin to invest in understanding the nuanced feelings and motivations that drive a range of complex behavior. Our models of others, also, follows suit — leading to improved mentalization and empathy.

• As we eliminate this splitting, the stakes for our failures become less and less, and we become ever less fragile and more robust to information and changes over time.

This virtuous cycle allows us to build deep, stable models of ourselves and others, enabling us to ever more effectively understand and navigate the world.