It’s hard for us to accept wrong decisions we’ve made. We like to believe we’re rarely wrong because it makes us feel safe and important.

It’s a mixture of survival and wanting to feel valued. There’s tension between our survival instinct and our need to feel valued, though the latter is usually dominant.

These two forces inform many of our decisions. The problem is that they’re completely self-focused. Too much self-focus is not only antisocial, it also leads to anxiety and even depression.

When we turn our attention toward solving problems bigger than ourselves, we find that our individual goals aren’t as important as we thought. But it’s not permanent. It’s a choice we have to keep making.