Cutting to Your Own Core

For all the time we spend with ourselves, we tend to have an awfully hard time understanding ourselves. For many, this is a laughing matter. Not understanding oneself doesn’t seem to be a terrible offense as long as nothing feels wrong in life. Why do the extra thinking if things are going well? Makes plenty of sense. But not everyone has such a luxury.

Sure, we all do things that we don’t quite understand, but what about the things we do that threaten our happiness or the happiness of others? What about bad habits we can’t seem to shake, or the self-sabotage we always manage to fall victim to?

Regardless of whether or not people facing this type of situation seek professional help, it’s almost guaranteed that self-judgment will ensue somewhere along the way. But why is this? What’s the point of self-judgment — a habit that would most would agree is objectively destructive? Turns out we can flip the script like this by not only asking ourselves what the point of self-judgment is, but what the point of any of our bad habits is. Let’s use an example to simplify this a little bit and break it down step by step:

Let’s talk about Mark. Mark’s a chronic nail-biter — has been since childhood. F.Y.I. the Mark I’m talking about is fictional, but I think it’s safe assume there are a few actual Marks out there with a bad nail-biting habit so, uh, Mark if the universe has put this article in your lap, then listen extra closely I guess.

Anyway, Marky Mark is a big time nail-biter. Like most people, after enough time, humiliation, and perhaps a few failed, blind attempts to remove this habit, he’ll feel shame over it. He’s likely to judge himself with commentary like, “My hands look disgusting. Only children do this. What’s wrong with me?”.

Does this sound familiar? It’s likely that we’ve all reached this stage on countless occasions. And from here, there are three routes commonly taken: One is actually talking to someone about it and getting it sorted out. Two is continuing to be miserable forever and hoping it goes away on it’s own. And three is bottling it up and pretending that nothing is wrong, which in Mark’s case will probably end up in him stealing from the cash register at a beauty salon and holding the perfectly manicured secretary at gunpoint. As you can see, the options get better and better.

There is, however, another approach to take which may offer you the answers you need without having to consult someone professionally or shoot up the people with pretty nails.

Remember when I asked what the point of self-judgment is? Though it’s an unhealthy form of shame, what we seek from self-judgment is ultimately to remind ourselves of how we could be doing things better and sparking ourselves to get on the right track.

If you hear nothing else from this article, hear this:

Never forget that everything we do is being done in search of a positive effect. Everything we do is our best guess at how to attain happiness. Ask yourself what benefit you’re searching for in each of these bad habits you wish to rid yourself of.

Mark probably isn’t biting his nails because he has a knack for cannibalism and he likes the taste, he’s doing it to calm his nerves. You don’t leave your room messy because you like not knowing how to find things, you leave it messy because you have other things you deem as more important and want to make sure you’re optimizing your time. You don’t stay in your dead-end job because you love it, you stay because you feel it’s safer and there’s less risk of rejection and financial issues than there would be in starting fresh. You don’t smoke because you like destroying your lungs, you smoke because you feel relaxed when you do it. This can stretch as far as you want. You don’t commit suicide because you want to cause pain to yourself and others, you do it because you think it’s the only way to end pain.

In order to cut to your core and gain a better understanding of yourself, simply ask what the motivation is, because you’re not going to act on anything without some sort of incentive. All good and bad behavior will be rooted in what you think is best for yourself, regardless of how warped your judgment of what’s best has become.

Understanding your motivations in this way is the first step of self-improvement. You’re now allotted the opportunity to separate your motivations from your habits. If you find that through a destructive habit like nail-biting you’re really in search of relaxation, you’re given the chance to seek healthier means of getting there and isolating the act of nail-biting for what it is, which, again, is destructive and useless. In fact, it’s now twice as useless as it once was because not only is it harming your body but it’s also become a source of emotional pain, which it was originally deployed to fight against. Changing the narrative around bad habits like this is essential to finding healthier ways to seek the same goals.