THE BRAIN BUILDS A MODEL OF YOU SO YOU CAN NAVIGATE THE WORLD

If our brain’s goal is to help you navigate the world effectively, the brain not only needs to model the world. It also needs to model YOU.

This model of your “self” is arguably the most important model you maintain because — as the saying goes — wherever you go, there you are.

This model of the self — just like everything else — is a simplified, imperfect model of our current status, our needs, and the gap between them. This model may reflect reality really well — or it may be totally divorced from reality.

We can think about the self in four parts:

  1. Real current self: Who we are today

  2. Real aspirational self: Who we would need to be to meet all our needs perfectly

  3. Model current self: Who we believe we are today

  4. Model aspirational self: Who we believe we need to be to meet all our needs perfectly

Remembering back to our “Foundations of Personality”, we can think about some of the terms used to define the self in terms of these quadrants.

Identity is our model of our current self. This model is based on evidence we’ve gathered over our lifetimes for how we work.

Self esteem is the gap between who we would need to be to meet our needs, and who we believe we are today. Said another way, it’s our assessment of how well we believe we are can currently meet our needs.

Self reflection describes how well our models reflect reality — both of who we are and of what we need.

Self actualization results from our ability to leverage our selves as we really are to achieve our goals and bring ourselves closer to who we want to become.