THE BEST A-VERSION OF YOU?

On the 6^th Birthday of Ted Lasso, we question the quest for self-improvement ahead of the UK’s annual September reset…

A decade ago Time Magazine featured a piece* titled “How To Be The Best Version of Yourself, ” a phrase that had been high-kicking around showbiz circles since the '90s but which probably achieved a more widespread usage due to the success of Ted Lasso, the brilliant Warner Bros comedy starring Jason Sudeikis and former BadGirl / Lady-of-the-Lake, Hannah Waddingham.

The Time piece was a reply to a Quora question, “What can I do to make sure I am becoming the best version of myself” and the person answering it was Ken Mazaika, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of The Firehouse Project, an online coding bootcamp.  Mazaika’s 21 points actually includes some useful tips for successful human development, but the final dictum ‘Launch your MVP (Minimum Viable Product) early’ is clearly rooted in his experience as a software engineer.

The Ted Lasso Show premiered on the 14^th of August, 2020.  That was five months into the Covid crisis, and the show's sunny-side-up, Sunflower State philosophy (both the title character and Sudeikis were raised in Kansas) immediately struck a chord with audiences sequestered by lockdowns and streaming like tear ducts in an onion ring processing plant. Folks who desperately wanted to ‘believe’ and had seemingly endless hours for both self and home improvement.

Five thousand miles from Kansas, in Calw, Swabia, Hermann Hesse, who died 64 years ago this week (on the 9th of August, 1962) was actually born into the self-improvement business; his father was a former Protestant missionary/theologian turned religious publisher.   One of the greatest writers of the past five hundred years (fitting comfortably alongside Shakespeare, Cervantes and Tolstoy) the Nobel prize-winner’s novels Siddhartha, Demian, Narziss and Goldmund and The Glass Bead Game all feature central characters aiming at self-perfection and failing badly, until they realise that (unlike software or aspiring soccer teams) the self is the product of all its parts and experiences -good, bad and ugly.

Hesse was following the great German literary tradition of Bildung, through which a protagonist is formed by experience, thereby becoming a fuller, more complete individual. He was also greatly influenced by the works of Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychologist/psychiatrist who taught that the process of ‘Individuation,’ -the integration of all the components of the psyche (again good, bad and ugly) -was the key to becoming a fully realised individual.

Because you can remove a line of code from a piece of software, you can transfer a footballer who’s not performing, but de-bugging or benching a key part of your own personality is a mug’s game. The introduction to a 2022 paper on Self-Discrepancy Theory points to some of the underlying factors thought to be prompting this psychological self-surgery and the negative impacts that may follow: **

‘Cognitive representations of the self refer to how individuals evaluate or perceive attributes that constitute the self. Self-discrepancy theory (SDT) posits that individuals possess three basic domains of self-representations that have an impact on motivational and affective behaviour.  The actual self is defined as one’s perceptions of the attributes that one actually possesses, the ideal self is defined as an idealized version of oneself including one’s aspirations, and finally the ought self represents a version of oneself one feels obligated to be as a sense of duty or obligation. SDT postulates that perceived discrepancies between both the actual self and the ideal self (actual:ideal discrepancy) and the actual self and the ought self (actual:ought discrepancy) lead to emotional distress. The nature of the emotional distress resulting from perceived discrepancies is yet conceptualized to be different for the two types of discrepancies.  Acual:ideal discrepancies should elicit dysphoric emotional vulnerability (sadness, disappointment or depression) because they are associated with feelings of failure and the absence of positive outcomes.  Actual:ought discrepancies should elicit anxious emotional vulnerability (worry or anxiety) because they are linked to apprehension and fear of punishment.’** 

Pulling in the opposite direction to Self-Discrepancy (SD), Self-Compassion (SC) may, or may not, be driving us towards seeking ‘better’ versions of ourselves …or both. It’s complicated.

‘There is logical justification for belief in the hypothesis that SC reduces motivation to improve oneself, as well as logical justification for the opposite belief, that it promotes motivation. If a person accepts themselves unconditionally, they will have positive feelings about themselves at their worst and best, while someone who accepts themselves conditionally might only have positive feelings about themselves when they’re at their best. Thus SC could put someone in a situation where there is no affective improvement to gain action to better oneself.  Conversely, it is possible that a positive state is beneficial in the search for motivation. Perhaps even having high compassion for oneself will cause someone to want them to achieve their best.’***

Maybe it takes a poet to take a stab at nailing the paradox:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

 (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman ‘Song of Myself,’ 1892

And a troubadour to update it for today:

Got a tell-tale heart, like Mr. PoeGot skeletons in the walls of people you knowI'll drink to the truth and the things we saidI'll drink to the man that shares your bedI paint landscapes, and I paint nudesI contain multitudes

Bob Dylan ‘I Contain Multitudes, Rough and Rowdy Ways album,’ 2020

And a fictional football manager to remind us that we can still come out the winners:

“If God wanted games to end in a tie, she wouldn’t have invented numbers”

Ted Lasso, The Hope That Kills You, 2020

DT

24 August, 2026

*How To Be the Best Version of Yourself  Ken Mazaika / Quora 6 September 2016

**Self-discrepancy, Depression, Anxiety, and Psychological Well-Being: The Role of Affective Style and Self-efficacy Pascal Schlechter, Jens H. Hellmann, Nexhmedin Morina, Cognitive Therapy and Research, & July 2022

***Self-Compassion and Motivation for Self-Improvement: A Meta-Analysis