This is how to build a happy life, the Atlantic's podcast on all things happiness.

I'm Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor, and happiness correspondent at the Atlantic.

People often ask this question, how do I find myself?

For a long time, I didn't really understand the nature of that question because I mean,

find yourself, look in the mirror, think a little bit, you're inside your head all day long,

but then I realized that people tend to be deeply alienated from who they consider themselves

actually to be. The reason is because of something that is defined in the psychological literature

as self-objectification. Self-objectification is just another form of objectifying a person.

It's just that the objectifier and the objectifier are the same person. As a kid growing up,

my father taught me, you should never objectify another person, which is to reduce them to a

particular trait, usually something that serves you. If you ask, how do I find myself,

you're basically saying, I don't know who I am, and the reason you don't know who you are,

probably, is because you have reduced yourself to one characteristic, to one trait, to one quality

that you want to be more than anything else. You objectified yourself, probably making you

unhappy, at very least it's making you kind of a stranger to yourself, and that's an uncomfortable

situation. You might ask yourself, what does self-objectification typically look like?

It looks like you thinking of yourself only in one dimension. Maybe you're an especially

attractive person physically, and people reward you for that. They give you attention, and that

attention feels good. Pretty soon you find yourself just playing up your own attractiveness

at the expense of all your other qualities. You find yourself posting pictures of yourself on

Instagram, so that people can admire your looks. That's pure self-objectification, and that's

really a lesser version of you. You're getting the reward, which is the attention of others,

...