Best Tool For Self-Evaluation | Dr. Paul Conti & Dr. Andrew Huberman

when somebody sits down to think about their strengths or self-t talk or um to just think about what they're made of and how they want to change or not change certain things, build on certain strengths, when and how should they do it?

— Yeah. I think all we need to bring is curiosity, right? That's all. And curiosity doesn't have to be overly serious or worried, right? It doesn't have to have a gravity to it. I mean, it can, but it can also be very light-hearted. You know, there's so many things that we're curious about, so many things we want to learn about. And this is great. It's great for our brains and health to be curious and to want to learn, but so often what we leave out of that equation is being curious about ourselves, right? And that can be a sort of high-spirited thing to do of, you know, what is there in me that runs through all the things that I do? How is it that I feel so different doing one thing than another? What are the common threads of me that run throughout my life? You know, this is this a great way to approach what's going right in us, right? To be curious about ourselves. And it's from there that it's easier to see, wow, in one certain kind of situation, I'm really not doing as well, right? Or I'm not as happy. Like then we can think about that and we don't have to be afraid of it. So bringing curiosity to ourselves, what runs through everything we do and also how we're different in different situations can help lead us to all sorts of answers about what makes us happy and what doesn't. When are we presenting a true and honest self? false self that even we know is false. So I think the only crucial ingredient is curiosity and then we can approach with seriousness and gravity or light-heartedness. We can be alone or we can be thinking with someone else. There's all sorts of good places that curiosity can take us.

— It's interesting that you talked about true self versus false self. Um I think the more state dependence we have, the more confusing that becomes, right? And I think perhaps even more so in this day and age, there seems to be not a complete but at least to me a kind of partial erosion of etiquette. I'm not saying this to encourage people to be more rigid. It just seems to me that I'm 50 now. When I was growing up, seemed like people would dress and act one way in one context and a different context. And there's some overlap obviously, but now there's this sort of propensity for not just oversharing, but there's information from all corners of the world coming through our devices all the time. And people are putting out information about many facets of their life all the time. Even people I went to high school with who weren't public facing in the traditional sense are putting out pictures of their kids and what they ate and this and the wins and the losses. And it's a very odd thing to do when in fact we evolved for so long just kind of experiencing oursel separate from all the other activities that we were doing and certainly that other people are doing in your clinical practice. Are you seeing more challenges with people creating separation between kind of aspects of self and aspects of life because of all the the information coming at them and maybe even that they're putting in the world. — I think it can be different depending upon what the person is doing, how they're using that information. So, so if you think of falsalseness of self, you know, it's possible a person can be engaged in something that even they themselves know isn't real, right? So, so wanting everyone to see what's best in my life and to think that, you know, I'm doing really well, you know, and maybe I'm doing that to hide something. Why am I doing that? Right? If I want to appear externally differently than how I am, there's a good place for curiosity about the falsalseness of that. What am I trying to protect against? You know, why is it that I want people to see me in a certain way that might be different from how my life actually is if it has, you know, not just all winds in it, right?

But but, you know, stressors too that might not be as glamorous. So, so that's one way we can use those resources. Another way can be to engage in ways that are more true to self. So someone who has an interest or a passion that it's hard to find people, you know, right around them. Uh but they can find that more distantly or people who have a lot of sensibility and compassion for some of the difficult things in the world who can find kindred spirits through social media. So I think we can use or misuse anything around us to either be we can use it to be closer to ourselves and to have a stronger sense of self, right? or we can use it to distract from who we really are and to maybe find solace somewhere else or find accolades somewhere outside of us because we're protecting against something. So I think the important point is always to be honest with ourselves. And if we bring compassionate curiosity, then we're not mad at ourselves and that we're not coming at ourselves of what's wrong with me or why can't I do this thing better or that thing better or why don't people like me more, whatever it may be, right? There are ways that we can guide ourselves away from honesty and truth. And if we look at ourselves, we don't have to be afraid of what we find. Maybe if we're worried people aren't liking us, we're spending time with not a healthy group of people, right? Or maybe there's something in myself I need to change if I'm feeling that. So, the key is just bringing honesty and curiosity and not being so afraid or so negative towards ourselves that we're going to hide from what it is that we can find to knit us together. — Yeah. I'm not trying to demonize social media, but we are in a strange new version of humanity where let's say somebody's sitting by themselves. Chances are their experience is vastly different than it would have been 30 years ago because they are most likely getting a lot of information about what other people are doing. — Could be good information. um could be interesting but nonetheless it's very different alone state and or they are doing things that hopefully they enjoy but there's this additional layer where it's put out into the world this

is very unusual so the reason I'm asking about this in the context of addressing the self exploring the self is that I wonder to what extent being really happy with oneself at some level involves being able to be curious and explore different ways of being and ways of thinking without the impulse of sharing that and without the feedback comparison of what other people are doing. Because the moment we see something else, there's more sensory input or the moment that we think what we're doing needs to be shared, it changes the experience. It's not truly an alone experience, — right? And I don't think it matters if you put it out to one follower or to a billion followers. It's still externalizing this thing that for thousands of years was just us with our thoughts, us with our emotions. And so processing time alone has become I believe a very different thing altogether. — Yeah, I think that's true. I think there's a sweet spot of connectedness to others, right? And we know that it's not good to have too little, right? that isolation isn't good for us. But where the modern world has gone is it is offers us too much the opposite, right? Where there's not enough aloneeness where if we're overconnected then in order to to decide what it is we even like or prefer how we feel about things, we're looking for external cues, right? So that sweet spot of having some external check-ins. How does the world around me feel? How do people I like and trust who seem like me different from me feel? It It's good to have those tests outside, but to have enough aloneeness that I am still thinking about myself and the questions, right, of life, the questions of my own life, I'm thinking about on my own before I'm pinging outside of me for, you know, for information or validation or even guidance. —