Ali Abdaal argues that "being yourself" is a myth shaped by genetics and childhood conditioning. Instead of accepting a fixed self, he suggests consciously designing who you want to become by leveling up specific stats like confidence, charisma, and humor, like upgrading a video game character.
Why can't we all just be ourselves? I think being yourself is kind of BS. I think choosing yourself is the way forward. Who I am, the myself, is purely a result of some genetics and some accidents of how I was raised in childhood and subconscious conditioning I had. Most people are not that conscious about the person they want to be. They are very unconscious about it because it subconsciously develops over time. And so knowing that, it's like, okay, you could do that. You could continue to just be yourself and allow who you are to be an accident of your circumstances. or you could choose yourself and you could figure out, okay, I'm here right now, but where do I actually want to be? The thing that you want to be, you want to make sure that it does feel authentic to you. And so it's almost like a video game. You have these multiple stats. You've got like a confidence stat, a charisma stat, a humor stat, a body, you know, muscularity stat, a stamina stat. And you can work on these stats over time. That doesn't change who you are deep down. It doesn't change the core of your soul, the core of your being. It just levels you up in your stats.
