Podcast2025-10-20

The Danger of Being Too Self-Aware

Angelo Somers on what trying for 20 costs you, and Nietzsche's take on the self as the story the winning drive tells afterward.

Podcast
Modern Wisdom
Guests
Angelo Somers

What does trying for 20 mean to you?

As with most things, people do it with a positive and a negative side. The idea is that when everybody else is trying for 10, you're gonna be the guy that tries to be 20.

The positive side of that is you can end up getting a lot done.

The negative side of it is you're constantly anchoring your actions and your behaviors to what you see other people around you doing, so in some sense it kind of reduces your freedom, but can increase your actual output or what you're managing to achieve.

If you're the type of guy who aims for 20, you're probably going to achieve a lot of cool stuff, but you might not be the happiest while you're doing it.

Self-belief

It's like a bidirectional sort of answer to this question. Obviously, if you don't believe that you can, you're never gonna actually try.

You have to have some kind of like, you just decide that you actually can, and this is the only way that you ever get any evidence that will actually come to serve as proof in the future.


We are easily tricked into thinking that we almost predicted something when it happened. — Taleb

Who We are is Constantly Changing

History is written by the victors.

There are different wills within you, and they kind of will battle for executive authority over your actions, and whichever one wins writes the history, and that is what the sense of self is. — Nietzsche

When you say I, that is just the winning drive rewriting the history to say that was me all along.



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