The “Soundtrack of Your Life” Delusion
Try spending the day listening to an iPod as you go about your business. How much more important it all seems. Put your hands in your pockets and start walking down the street. It’s you, oh fearless warrior, and your battle against the world.
Welcome to the narrative fallacy.
God forbid you should ever have one with you when you’re running and it begins to rain. If you don’t have a shirt on, it’s over. Out of the corner of your eye, you’ll swear that trees are bowing as you pass.
Welcome to the “movie about your life.”
Ryan Holiday is the bestselling author of Trust Me, I’m Lying, The Obstacle Is The Way, Ego Is The Enemy, and other books about marketing, culture, and the human condition. His work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared everywhere from the Columbia Journalism Review to Fast Company. His company, Brass Check, has advised companies such as Google, TASER, and Complex, as well as Grammy Award winning musicians and some of the biggest authors in the world. He lives in Austin, Texas.
http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html
This link is to an excellent and funny article about this subject.
Hey that’s really interesting, thanks for that nice post.
Could we be giving TLP anymore love? And yet… I love him, and that entry. The iPod example is quite apt.
The funny thing is I don’t like him or his writing very much. That post on the other hand, is fantastic.
A functional narcissist can actually have a compelling personality and good relationships. The people I like most seem to have a definite narcissistic streak.
Granted, most people we call narcissists “aren’t doing it right.” But I still think people today respond better to a little narcissistic audacity than they do to someone whose opinions blow in the wind. Rubber must hit the road and oftentimes it’s a narcissist behind the wheel.
I just think healthy narcissism should be differentiated from total self-absorption.