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The Desire to Be Liked is Rotting Your Brain

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One of the main things standing in the way of people’s success is their desire to be liked, making them sacrifice objective correctness for social acceptability. In effect, that means that whatever goal people claim having, their actual goal — the one revealed by their actions — isn’t to be successful, but to be liked. People hear this, nod, and think: “ah yes, people do that, because they’re so basic and dumb. But not me.” But my point is that everyone, including you and me, is doing this; and, most importantly, that we don’t do it because we’re basic and dumb — but because we’re human. This instinct for likability is rooted in us at such a deep level that it is mostly uncurable — the best you can hope for is to mitigate is around the edges. The depth of the likability instinct This instinct comes from a lot of different places, and has been pounded into us over millions of years of evolution. First, there’s the obvious fact that humans survive and thrive in groups, and so we’ve self-

One of the main things standing in the way of people’s success is their desire to be liked, making them sacrifice objective correctness for social acceptability. In effect, that means that whatever goal people claim having, their actual goal — the one revealed by their actions — isn’t to be successful, but to be liked. People hear this, nod, and think: “ah yes, people do that, because they’re so basic and dumb. But not me.” But my point is that everyone, including you and me, is doing this; and, most importantly, that we don’t do it because we’re basic and dumb — but because we’re human. This

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