You come down with something bad and you’re sent to bed for
a few days with a warm drink and a painkiller or six. After some time you begin
to feel better, and you thank your biological immune system for its service
healing you, whilst also scolding it for not protecting you in the first place.
You likely wish you had a stronger immune system to protect you from incoming
viruses and flus.
It came as a surprise to me to find out that we actually
have a psychological immune system
too, and it serves us in a similar way to our biological immune system. Walter
Mischel explains that this system allows us to ‘see ourselves as having more
positive and fewer negative qualities than most of our peers’. It’s function is
to protect us from chronic stress and dealing with terrible news, and it’s
reasonable to extend this and say it helps us cope with our friends and peers
when we receive negative and upsetting feedback. Our psychological immune
system allows us to take in negative views, and the stronger our system is,
overcome them. Think about the millions of people that despise Kanye West and
vocalise this to him regularly. Were it not for his strong (ego) psychological
immune system, he would probably have stopped making music a long time ago.
Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up for you to decide…
In a study of over 800,000 high school seniors, Myers found
that ‘compared to our average peer, most of us fancy ourselves as more
intelligent, better looking, less prejudiced, more ethical, healthier, and
likely to live longer’! We’ve all got egos, some are bigger and some are
smaller. Taylor demonstrated that ‘high self-enhancers (big egos) have lower
biological stress levels’. In contrast: ‘the realists who perceive themselves
more accurately experience lower self-esteem and more depression, and are
generally less mentally and physically healthy’.
I conjecture that having a big (ish) ego is an essential
tool for effectively dealing with criticism (‘haters’, if you’re a hip-hop artist?). This ability is a fundamental element of success.
“If
you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never
will change the outcome”
-
Michael Jordan