Hi! Welcome. You being here means more than you know. Knowing it resonates with you keeps me going. I'm Lavena Xu-Johnson. I write about psychology for founders. Why? Because scaling a business means knowing ourselves first.
Happy Wednesday,
A couple of years ago, I was quite involved with a particular industry.
I tried to speak their language, mingle with the people who moved the needles, and quickly build a good network around it.
But there was something in me that didn’t feel right.
As someone who has always been very aligned with myself, I wasn't asking myself as many ‘why’ questions during that time; all I wanted to do was go all in, try my hardest, and be the best in the network. I felt as though I stepped on the gas without looking where I was going; the cost of the force. The need to impress.
One day, I started to have these recurring dreams of collapsing buildings and tsunamis; my life and death were in the hands of Mother Nature.
And dreams are an interesting thing, as my therapist always says to me: every person and object in your dream is part of you. Nightmares are usually a symptom of you rejecting and suppressing a part of yourself or of you grieving that part of you to give birth to a new identity.
The water was taking my life. My ambition was sacrificing my values.
It wasn’t the group or the industry that was inherently bad; it just wasn’t for me. I didn’t believe in or agree with their values.
In the recent movie The Odyssey, Odysseus, as a hero, had an identity crisis I did not expect to be portrayed in a heroic movie - as a leader, he won the war, but at the cost of betraying himself; that’s when he became a lost soul for seven years.
He couldn’t find his home, and it was more than metaphorical: some part of him wouldn’t let himself find it.
And that was the main premise I found most beautiful about the film: it's hard to accept our dark desires, and the unstoppable motion and force that push us to pursue them, but it’s harder to come out of it, admitting it was a period of self-betrayal.
Sometimes, betraying oneself is what it takes to become the person we're becoming.
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How common self-betrayal actually is
In 2018, a research team in Moscow, led by psychologist Oksana Mironova, ran a pilot survey to examine something almost nobody had studied directly: how common is self-betrayal?
Of 212 adults surveyed, 70% said they had betrayed themselves at least once in their life, most commonly in their career (42%), followed by personal relationships (30%) (Mironova et al., 2019).
When asked what self-betrayal meant to them, the most common answers were acting against their own principles, doing something they didn't want to do because it was expected of them, and a general sense of not accepting who they were during that period (Mironova et al., 2019).
The discrepancy between who we are and who we're supposed to be
In 1987, Psychologist E. Tory Higgins proposed a framework for how we understand ourselves:
He argues that we each contain three versions of ourselves:
the actual self: who we currently are
the ideal self: who we wish to be
the ought self: who we believe we're obligated to be, often based on what others expect of us
He named it the self-discrepancy theory.
When the actual self diverges from the ideal self, we tend to experience dejection, disappointment, and low mood.
When the actual self diverges from the ought self, people tend to experience agitation: guilt, anxiety, and a sense of exposure to consequence (Higgins, 1987).
Which discrepancy do you feel the most lately?
Why this cuts deeper than disappointment
Not every self-discrepancy equals the heaviness of self-betrayal: missing a deadline is not the same as compromising a value after all.
A 2024 study conducted by Kari James and colleagues found that self-discrepancy is a direct driver of moral injury: the guilt and shame that come from acting in a way that contradicts our own values (James, McKimmie, & Maccallum, 2024). This is a distinct condition from ordinary disappointment. It carries self-condemnation, and often, a fractured sense of who we are.
Falling short of a goal disappoints us. Acting against a value we hold, even once, can convince us we've become someone we don't recognize.
The Odyssey story fits this closely. Odysseus wasn't punished by outside forces for winning the war. He spent seven years unable to find home because a part of him wouldn't let himself, a private penance for the version of himself the war had required him to become. The war ended. The moral injury stayed.
The tests on our journey
At any step of a founder’s journey, we face difficult choices, and more often than not, the pursuit of ambition creates self-discrepancy.
We agree to investor terms that compromise something we said we'd never compromise. We say yes to a partner whose values we don't share because the deal is too good for the company to turn down. We build relationships within a network of transactions, rather than carefully crafting our circle, because we care more about who we are becoming.
In the moment, we think we are thinking strategically, until the quiet nights when the discomfort creeps in and we wonder whether the so-called success delivered on its promises.
Key takeaways
Separate the discrepancies: Do you feel as though you're falling short of your own ideal self, or living by an obligation someone else set for you?
Read the specific emotion. If you are in the aftermath of guilt and shame, know that 70% of people experience self-betrayal. If it was a leap you had to take to grow, let it become a story you're glad you can tell, in the years to come.
Does the deal align with your ought self? Before agreeing to a term, a partner, or a group, step away from the desirable outcome, reflect on what this means to who you become.
Sometimes, we don’t face the deal we made with ourselves until we are living it. Let it be the lesson, not the regret we put on our shoulders.
How's the depth of today's edition?
As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.
Lavena
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