Why Deluding Ourselves Feels Good

What the memoir Careless People reveals about staying stuck, self-protection, and the fear of walking away.

I couldn’t wait to tell my family in the States, so I group-called them from a restaurant booth in London and announced that I had news.

“You’re pregnant!” my sister guessed excitedly.

This threw me since I wasn’t dating anyone. “No…I got a job at Apple!”

For me, this was more exciting than having a baby. Apple recruited me – me! – as a communications specialist for Europe.

I wrote to friends, “I still can't believe it and expect them to call me any day to say there's been a mix-up…this feels like the Harvard of jobs.”

Working there felt special. Like I was part of an elite team. I loved it.

So I get why Sarah Wynn-Williams, author of the Facebook memoir/exposé Careless People, is so enamored with Facebook (this was a long time ago) when she finally lands her dream job.

And while I hope I would have left the toxic work environment she describes way earlier than she did, I also get why she stayed.

We’re all good at deluding ourselves when we want to stay in the group. It’s the seduction of being a chosen one.

This is why many of us are so scared of speaking in front of groups. We don’t want to say the wrong thing and be cast out of the tribe. These are ancient desires and fears.

"Everybody wants to be us"

Wynn-Williams reminds me of Andrea, the overworked personal assistant to fashion editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. She hates her job and thinks her boss is unhinged, but she can’t walk away.

“What if I don’t want to live the way you live?” Anne Hathaway (Andrea) blinks sadly as she and her ruthless boss (Meryl Streep!) drive to the airport.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Andrea. Everybody wants this. Everybody wants to be us.”

In the book, Wynn-Williams explains why it’s never the right time to move on: She needs to sort citizenship; she’s about to go on maternity leave; she’s worried about health insurance.

These are all legitimate concerns. But she’s also Facebook Director of Global Policy and could probably get a job anywhere. She chooses not to.

When the stories we tell ourselves stop serving us

Wynn-Williams says she stayed because she hoped she could do more good from the inside. And that’s a fair and virtuous stance. From her telling, fake news was literally getting people killed – I shouted f@@@@ck! as she described the mass sexual assaults against Rohingya women in Myanmar.

She believed her presence within the company might lessen the harm. But as she tried to get hate speech sparking genocide taken down, she’s left screaming into the void.

She’s continually shocked by each crisis unfolding at her workplace:

“I can’t believe we’re lying to the U.S. government!”
“What?! We’re following China’s requests to censor people?”
“We’re targeting emotionally vulnerable children with ads?!”

To a Stoic, this wouldn’t be surprising. Marcus Aurelius advised preparing ourselves daily for encounters with the unjust, the self-interested, the shortsighted. Pretending the world is different only makes us suffer.

Reviewers of Wynn-Williams’ book criticize her denial of reality. But we all delude ourselves, pretty much on a daily basis:

“I’m shocked that traffic is this bad at 5 p.m. on Friday!”
“I would’ve spoken up in that meeting, but there was never the right time.”

We tell ourselves stories so we don’t have to change. Psychologists call it cognitive dissonance – the mental gymnastics we do to ease this discomfort when our actions don’t align with our values: It’s not the right time to leave. I’m doing more good than harm. Things will change.

Why this matters

Deluding ourselves in this way feels great in the short term, but ultimately keeps us stuck. Whether it’s about speaking up, leaving a partner or a job, or following through on a dream.

We can only change our lives when we start behaving like the people we say we want to be. When our actions align with what we say matters.

Wynn-Williams says she doesn’t like what her company is doing, but she doesn’t say no to them. Like most of us, to manage the pain, she seems to give in to avoidance and black-and-white thinking.

“I have no choice. I either stay at this job I hate or I become homeless and bring everyone down with me.”

But life is rarely either/or. There are options in between.

This reminds me of Devil Wears Prada again, when Andrea says she “didn’t have a choice” but to accept the Paris work trip her colleague, Emily, desperately wanted.

“Oh no, you chose,” Miranda said. “You chose to get ahead.”

I’m not judging Wynn-Williams or claiming to know her motives – who knows what we would have done in her situation? (PS this is a good conversation or journal prompt).

The stories in this book pulled me in and had me reflecting on how we all act like Andrea – or Wynn-Williams – at times. Swept up in our individual dramas, wanting to fit in and wanting to win.

But at what cost?

When we value prestige, or the comfort of the status quo, over doing what’s right, anxiety creeps in. That mental discomfort that comes when our actions don’t align with who we believe we are. And no matter how hard we negotiate with ourselves, underneath, our soul knows the truth.

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Where are you telling yourself you just have to live with it – in your work, your relationships, your everyday life? I help people find their voice and take action on what matters.