Super-Ego 2.0: Creating the Superhuman Version of You
How to design your identity as a compass for the age of AI.
Do you believe you really understand yourself?
And do you understand what you are capable of?
Has this updated or changed at all with the rise of AI?
Today I’ll explore four concepts and how they can work together to create the best version of yourself.
The Super-Ego
The Mask
The Alter-Ego
The Rival-Ego
And how to use these concepts to improve and become the best version of yourself.
This article was inspired by Jayson Meng’s article called - The Super-Ego.
A few years ago, I never thought I’d live in a world where I’m meeting robots, using AI to augment my work, speaking Chinese in discussions and see the world changing so fast.
I genuinely thought that working harder would solve every problem and I just kept trying to get more juice and efficiency out of myself and everything.
Now I’ve been meeting Robots
Giving panel talks in Chinese, and then speaking in Russian at dinner later.
This is one of the many counterintuitive lessons I’ve learnt. At a certain point, most of the important lessons are counterintuitive. Here are some of the other lessons I’ve learnt.
Counterintuitive Lessons I’ve Learnt
How to overcome any situation and achieve any goal by focusing on the destination rather than the obstacle.
The importance of demand / supply in business and positioning for surplus.
The importance of direction and alignment.
Overcoming enmeshment and how to set boundaries in relationships - in personal and professional relationships - from a recovering micromanager.
Many more that Ii’ll share in the future. (I’ve been recording all the lessons I’ve been learning in a notebook that I’ll share). You can learn more by subscribing.
So first I’m going to introduce the idea that you can be much more than you currently are and to create the bigger version of yourself.
The Superhuman Version of You.
This is the blue print and idea of who you can become.
The Super-Ego
The super-ego is one of the three parts of the psychic apparatus defined by Sigmund Freud in his structural model of the mind.
It represents the ideal self, creating positive feelings (pride) when behavior aligns with internalized societal standards and parental values.
The important thing about the super-ego is that you are given it by parents and society.
This was good for most of human history, but as we enter a massive societal shift, we need to take control of the super-ego into our own hands.
We go from a passive super-ego to creating it consciously.
As Jayson Meng says:
In the AI era, the Super-Ego is something entirely different. It’s a future self that can be deliberately constructed. Not a constraint — a compass. Not morality — possibility.
“Not a second me. My PLUS.”
That’s the Super-Ego. It’s the version of you that you’re trying to become. Your ideal operating state. Your God’s-eye view of your own life.
That’s level of meta-cognition and meta-thinking is more important now.
Why is that important? Because the society and world of those inherited values no longer exists.
Humans now are like the fleas experiment.
The constraints have been lifted but we are still stuck in our old ways of thinking.
And there is another idea that I learnt that I think stops many of us from improving and that’s the idea of our mask.
The Mask
Another idea I got by speaking to a drama teacher. It’s that many of us wear masks which we learn through society and education. To limit ourselves to fit in.
In order to break free and become better at acting, we have to learn to lift this mask, to be our own weird self.
It’s scary because it’s vulnerable and we are all a bit weird.
On the one hand we need to learn to be quiet in when someone else is speaking and we need to learn how to queue so society can work.
But many of us have also been told that it’s not OK to be real ourselves.
And that’s something we need to learn to overcome.
So we can learn to listen and transmit and tap into our unique signal.
The mask is the limiting beliefs that we hold about ourselves to the outside world. But they are also connected to how we see ourself.
Our mask affects our concept of self, and our concept of self and what we believe is OK puts up our mask.
It’s scary to become something bigger than you are because people are not going to like it.
You are changing, you are no longer your old you.
Have solitude and space to listen to yourself is one essential part of it, which is something I explore in Signal Vs Noise
Another concept is that of the alter-ego.
Another version of yourself.
We are all multifaceted and complex organisms.
We play multiple roles, we are friends, leaders, workers, clients, customers, fathers, sons, brothers, and many more.
We present oureslves in different ways to different situations.
So who are we really? We are not any single one version of those but a combination of all of those.
Sometimes those selves are logically inconsistent and incomatbile. Our externalised self is different to our real self when we wear masks.
One idea that I think is helpful is the idea of the alter-ego.
Even a version of yourself that doesn’t even exist in the world yet.
The Alter-Ego
This is like how Clark Kent has the alter-ego of Superman.
This is our vehicle for becoming the Super-ego - and a mental model for that.
We can create an alter-ego in our mind that we don’t inhabit all the time but we inhabit it in one small place.
We might even create that alter-ego first in our mind - we write about it, or we find one small outlet to become that alter-ego.
It exists just in private first.
Then we feed it and watch it grow.
It gradually begins in a new domain.
For example if you travel to a new country and meet new people, you can more easily become that alter-ego.
But how do you actually create that alter-ego and do that?
Being Delusional
One way is to just be a little bit delusional.
That can be good, but you can also just become delusional eg., a mad man.
How do you draw the line?
The line is often quite fine.
But I think the vision of your greater self should come from somewhere grounded in reality.
It should start from the macro or the micro.
By looking at things in the small scale and expanding it, or the large scale and reapplying it.
One idea I have is by really being conscious about your reality and how your mental models work which is how I explored going into detail about your definitions.
Another is to learn from super successful people and get inspired by what people are actually doing in the world already.
Elon Musk is one figure that we can take great inspiration from. He has created himself and has said that he believes anyone can become excellent.
If he can do something, then it can’t be impossible.
But you don’t need to become Elon Musk, you can take inspiration from anyone alive today or in the past, or take bits from different people.
One of the great things I did was to meet Billionnaires and speak to them. I went up to speak to Chinese business leaders in conferences, and I read biographies of great people in history.
It helps you see what’s possible.
Because often people around you have limiting beliefs that keep them safe, or limiting stories they tell themselves.
Being OK to Make Mistakes
One thing I learnt from watching China’s robotic development is that failures are common and part of the process, and it was a reminder that we need to be OK to see failure if we are going to progress.
But this article is about how we can create a forcing function to improve ourselves and thats by creating an imaginary rival-ego.
The Rival-Ego
The concept of a rival-self isn't new - performance coaches and competitors have used versions of it for years
One idea comes from Andrew Tate in creating a better version of yourself that is competing for you.
And for anything you say about Andrew Tate, he has achieved fame, wealth and success and there is something to learn from his mental models.
What would your ideal and best version be like? And imagine a world where that person exists and he is your rival?
Think of it like the ghost car in a racing game with your personal best time.
It's a transparent version of your best lap, always just ahead, showing you exactly where you're losing time.
It’s an incredibly powerful way to think and make decisions.
Because it overcomes our natural inclination to focus on how we feel in the moment, and how we feel is often a result of our tendency to stay safe, and to stay comfortable and not take any risk.
Because there is a potential version of yourself that is completely different and much better, and your goal is to get as close as possible to that version.
It was good for our survival in a dangerous world, but if we want to create our best self, that safe version of ourself has to die.
Here’s How I Built My Rival-Ego
I built my super-ego by sitting down and imainging what I can be. By focusing on where I go, and what really excites me.
But I built rival-ego less by spending time on a grand vision, but rather as a heuristic when making any decision.
Would my rival-ego do this? or not?
By Elimination
It helps by getting clear on what I’m not going to do and what my rival. I’ve found that the first step to getting or becoming something new is to delete and prune your old self.
The path to maximal potential isn't through adding more, but through elimination.
This is an essential part of gardening and something I learnt from that that can be applied to business and self development.
Plants grow in all sorts of directions but in order to self direct you must trim back those areas of growth that are consuming resources and pulling you in different directions. So you can channel resources and growth into the direction you want to go.
By unfollowing everyone who no longer gives value, and closing doors that no longer serve you, you have an abundance of energy, and you can listen and watch where that goes.
For example I recently did pruning of my social networks by unfollowing everyone on instagram andX who I felt was not aligned with my future self. I had only 30-90 followers on those platforms.
My feed was basically empty, and that created a vacuum in which to fill it.
It’s about turning down the noise, and going quiet so you can fill it with your own signal.
I also grew Global Admissions by reducing our services for students that didn’t align with our future services. We increase prices, and we converted our old contracts to new ones.
You can learn more about what we’re building at Global Admissions here
It reduced our customers, and left a huge surplus of energy and resources to explore new ones.
By Decisions
Would my rival ego waste time sitting in a cafe or go and meet people? Would they be sending emails or have the courage to go to talk to a certain person or reach out?
You can tap into this idea that you probably already have or can easily imagine, and it’s a fast way to make decisions.
Golden Era of Expansion
We are in a golden era of expansion where anything is possible, and as Mark Zuckerberg used to say.
The greatest risk is often not taking any risk.
I talk about this more and why alignment in this era is much more important.
Do you think your super-ego and sense of self has changed with the rise of AI? What possibilities do you see for yourself? I’m Interested in your thoughts.
The Sequence
So here we have gone through four concepts to create the best version of yourself.
First you build the Super-Ego - the deliberate compass, the possibility of becoming better. The version of yourself you’re actually optimising toward. You overcome the version of yourself that your parents or society handed you.
Then you remove your Mask - the learned helplessness and limitations that are capping potential. First you identify it, then you get comfortable lifting it, step by step where you can. Your best version of yourself has no mask.
One way is to create an Alter-Ego - the best version of yourself in one area. You can create it in one area first first. Private. A new country, a new room, and a new domain where the old version of you has no authority. You eliminate an old habit by replacing it with a new one.
And you create your Rival-Ego - the forcing function. The version of you that didn’t hesitate at the door you stood in front of. The one that knows exactly what to do, and the one that you can.
You do this by elimination, by discovery, by making mistakes, by surrounding yourself with the environment that your future self thrives.
You don’t destroy the old you, you stop feeding it.
A few years ago I was trying to extract more efficiency from the same version of myself.
Working harder at being who I already was. What I didn’t understand then is that the ceiling wasn’t my effort - it was my identity.
The robots, the Chinese panels, the Russian dinners - none of that came from the person I was five years ago.
It came from deciding to compete against a better version of myself rather than compare myself to people around me.
You already deep down know what your rival-ego and future self looks like.
It’s waiting for you.
The question is if you are ready to become it.
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Because it doesn’t need time, it doesn’t need effort,
It just needs alignment.
"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
If You Like Worksheets
Here is a worksheet you can use to ask yourself these questions.
You can also prompt yourself, upload it to AI of your choice to critique yourself.
Superhuman Curriculum
This article is a part of the Superhuman Curriculum, a framework for becoming your best self in the age of AI.
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Thanks!