We spend our lives preoccupied with the self, yet some of our happiest moments are during hypo-egoic states.

There is no one single, true self inside each of us.

Self-esteem can be seen as an internal gauge of how valued and accepted we feel.

People who are more satisfied with themselves generally have a higher quality of life.

In the 1960s, psychologist Gordon Gallup conducted a series of now-classic animal experiments. Gallup marked the foreheads of anesthetized chimpanzees with a red dye. Upon waking, the chimps looked in a mirror, and just as many humans would have done, touched the red spot on their foreheads. This recognition of their own reflection became evidence that the chimps possessed rudimentary self-awareness.

Self-awareness is just one piece of the kaleidoscopic construct at the center of our lives – the self. Nearly everything we do is through it or in the service of it. An entire industry tells us how to protect, improve, and elevate it.

Yet, the story of the self involves a paradox. All our devout preoccupation with it is also what fuels our unhappiness. In fact, some of our most gratifying moments – in leisure, work, relationships, spirituality – occur during hypo-egoic states, when we temporarily forget our self-improvement ambitions.

Social psychologist Mark Leary has studied the self for 50 years. He defines it as “the cognitive apparatus that underlies conscious self-awareness” – akin to a negotiator mediating the different facets of our thoughts, emotions, motives and behavior. Among Leary’s biggest insights is that self-awareness – a far more complex version of what Gallup demonstrated with chimps – is what sets us........

© Psychology Today