178 - How To Self Mythologize Like A Gangster
Everyone tells themselves a story about how they got to be where they are. So what do successful people “mythologize” about themselves, and why don’t we?
Some self-mythologies are clearly delusional. When Jeff Bezos tried to rebrand himself as a space-faring test pilot during his Blue Origin phase, or when Mark Zuckerberg declared he would only eat meat he personally hunted and slaughtered, becoming a more primal male (a resolution he has since relaxed) the attempts to re-brand themselves came off as disingenuous. This is similar to when Michael Jordan told the world he had always been “the underdog” in his youth, when in reality his coaches and mentors attested to the opposite; that the up-and-coming basketball phenom had received a privileged amount of attention and extra coaching.
In short, we all make up mythologies about ourselves in our own mind: where we came from, what we had to overcome, what we’re all about at our core. So why does it seem so many rich and famous people end up with such delusional mythologies about themselves? Would we be better off, or at least wealthier, if we made up grandiose self-mythologies?
In this episode we’ll weigh some of the pros and cons of re-imagining our own stories to make ourselves heroic. We’ll talk about societal heroes like nurses, soldiers, and police, who actually deserve their heroic myth, and compare their self-stories to the realities of the job. We’ll talk about celebrities who have taken self-mythologizing from profitable to self-delusional. And we’ll compare the self-mythologies of Al Capone, a gangster who believed he was a good man with a bad temper, to his eldest brother, who was of all things a boy scout and award-winning law enforcement agent.
Whose self-mythology is the most profitable? The person who tells themselves a story and everyone else agrees? Or the person who lies to themselves, and it makes them rich and famous?
Links:
https://www.amazon.com/Two-Gun-Hart-Long-Lost-Brother/dp/1506124631
https://todayinhistory.blog/2022/05/19/march-28-1892-two-gun-hart-prohibition-cowboy-2/
https://www.historynet.com/two-gun-hart-the-prohibition-cowboy/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/smarts/200901/on-the-value-of-mythologizing-yourself