Kelly connects with Dr. Steven J. Heine, Professor of Social and Cultural Psychology at the University of British Columbia. They discuss his new book, “Start Making Sense: How Existential Psychology Can Help Build Meaningful Lives in Absurd Times.” 

One of the big issues today is social comparison – which has always been around – but we just didn’t have social media before. 

 “That’s right. Everyone’s life looks better than our own, right? We see that people are very careful how they curate it on social media. But we’re not just comparing ourselves to our next-door neighbor. Now, we’re comparing ourselves to everyone else in the world, and we’re always finding people who look much better than us. And yeah, this is creating a lot of status anxiety.” 

This idea comes up on the podcast a lot – the idea that we think we are oneself when, in fact, we are many selves. 

“This is the challenge for us is that we want to feel that our life makes sense, that it’s coherent, that all the different parts fit together. But in many ways, you know, our lives don’t always make that much sense. We can be quite different people in different situations. You might be a very caring, doting parent, but then, when you’re driving in traffic, you become extremely rude and obnoxious, shouting at the other drivers. You might be ambitious at work. You might be silly with your friends. So, we have these different facets of ourselves.” 

You write about the self-premise, ‘I am good,” and how that distorts our self-view. 

“In principle it’s not all that different that we see what we want to see in our lives. We’re interpreting it through this lens that we’re looking through. And, for most people, it’s a positively distorted lens, so that we remember our successes; and we kind of, you know, forget about our failures. When we do something well, we take credit for it. When something bad happens, we usually blame it on others. And it’s by having this  premise that I am good, that this shapes the way that we tell our life stories.” 

Photo Credit: Paul Joseph