Confession: I’ve been using pseudonyms for years whenever I was working on something new. Even while I was running a media and publishing business – I used pseudonyms.
Why?
Well, it depends on when you asked me…
If you had asked me at the time, I would’ve come up with all sorts of reasonably sounding rationalizations to justify doing so:
- Using my real name would be exploited by malignant actors who would launch negative SEO and spam attacks against my websites (a big deal for a publisher who relies on SEO traffic).
- Being pseudonymous would allow me to decouple my personal reputation from my business ventures – similar to how a limited liability corporation protects its individual shareholders’ personal assets from being claimed by business debt holders (while I do think there’s some merit to this idea put forward by Balaji Srinivasan, I believe that in most cases its cons outweigh the pros, as I explain below).
- I became kind of religious for a while (I’ve since seen the light and became secular, thank God! (or an agnostic atheist, for you pedantic freaks out there), and one of the websites I owned was actually in the religious education space, so the last thing I wanted was to “out myself” as religious before I had my own shit figured out (that reason was actually legit).
If you had asked me today? I would’ve told you that’s all bullshit.
The simple truth is: I was afraid.
… I was afraid people would figure out I had no clue what I was doing.
… I was afraid of being perceived as a failure.
… I was afraid of committing to anything publicly, which might make me susceptible to consistency bias and sunk cost, lest it would pigeonhole me into something I’m no longer passionate about (or worse, into something I have come to hate).
I might not have been able to articulate these things explicitly, but I acted it out nonetheless.
Needless to say, poor ol’ Rafael had a wee bit of self-esteem issues. Looking back, it’s insane how much I let my emotional pre-dispositions at the time dictate my decisions, and then let my rational brain come up with rationalizations so that my ego could sleep better at night.
This, of course, never works. We can’t fool our own conscience. All we’re doing is sweeping these inadequacies under the rug, until at some point our subconscious completely overflows with all the crap we’ve been suppressing in there, and forces us to contend with our fears and aversions one way or the other. But I digress…
Of course, hiding in the shadows meant also foregoing all the benefits that come from tightly coupling your personal reputation and your business ventures:
- Accountability
- Skin in the game
- Spillover effects (the business helping the personal brand and vice versa)
- Network building
- Building equity (not just financial equity)
Not to mention that by avoiding ownership of my work, I perpetuated the same fear, aversion, and impostor syndrome that led me to work from the comfort of the shadows to begin with.
And the sad part? I knew I was making these tradeoffs, and I chose to make them anyway. In other words, I willingly gave up all the benefits that can result from ownership of one’s work, just so I could avoid having to deal with negative feedback, criticism, or personal accountability – god forbid it would hurt my poor feelings.
Well… as you might have guessed: Things change.
Wait, let me rephrase that: we change. Whether its due to external factors or due to our own volition and self-determination (or both). Even if you choose to stay in the shadows – whatever form of “shadow” it may be – you still change. Every day we choose the comfort of the shadows over sticking our neck out there and risk being “booed off the stage” (metaphorically speaking, unless you’re Bill Burr) – this makes us more averse to public feedback, and more likely to hide in the shadows the next day. Before you know it, you dug your heels so deep in the shadows that you become completely paralyzed by the mere thought of doing anything in public.
That’s no way to live. And that’s no way to work. And as the famous cliche goes, for entrepreneurs – there’s no such thing as work-life balance. Your work and your life are integrated, whether you like it or not.
What’s the alternative?
Simple. Don’t avoid public scrutiny – face it, embrace it, seek it… and you will learn from it
Note: That doesn’t mean you should listen to any random troll who gets off at throwing mud at other people’s work. Assess criticism selectively, from people who are objective (hint: don’t ask your mom), who know what they’re talking about, and who engage in good faith.
To quote Jeff Bezos:
“When you’re being criticized, there’s a simple process you need to go through: Look yourself in the mirror and decide: is your critic right? Do you agree? Are you doing something wrong? If you are wrong – change. If you are right – do NOT change, no matter how much pressure is brought to bare.”
Jeff Bezos
But what if we’ve spent so much time hiding in the shadows, that we forgot what it feels like to take public accountability? (like I have)
Ah! Well, in that case, Buddha’s golden mean would do us no good; we need something a little “stronger” that would undo years of conditioning and thrust us towards a healthy equilibrium a little faster.
This is where Epictetus’ “Contrary Habit” principle comes in handy:
“Since habit is a powerful force that leads us where it will, when we’ve become accustomed to exercising our desires and aversions in relation to these external things alone, we must set a contrary habit in opposition to that habit, and when impressions are most inclined to make us slip, there we must apply our training as a counteracting force.”
Epictetus
There’s a reason why Epictetus is often credited as being the forefather of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) )
How am I going to apply that in practice? By doing the opposite of what I’ve been doing so far that has led me to develop the habits I would like to recalibrate.
This means:
- Building in the shadows –> Building in public
- Obscurity & pseudonymity –> Radical transparency & openness
- Avoiding challenges and taking the easy road –> Setting aggressive challenges and deadlines (publicly)
For how long will I be doing this? For as long as I deem it necessary – based on how much I uphold the principles I’ve outlined above, based on how much I feel I’ve over-corrected towards over-sharing, and based on how much (perceived) social pressure I feel.
I’ll be posting everything right here on my website that I just set up (and on X/Twitter), under my own name, for everyone to see (and follow along if you’re interested).
And yea, I’m fully aware that right now I’m just shouting into the void (unless you’re here from the future and you somehow found this post. Heya 👋). But I nevertheless wanted to write this post to mark this new chapter, even if it was for symbolic purposes.
We all get to choose whether we live out our own hero’s journey, or stay in the comfort of the shadows.
Each choice has its benefits: the former gives you adventure, ownership, and the potential for self-actualization; the latter gives you security, comfort, and familiarity.
But each choice also carries a cost:
- Choose the hero’s journey – and you are guaranteed to face uncertainty, challenges, and tribulations that will continuously put your adaptability, resilience, and fortitude to the test.
- Choose to remain in your ordinary world – and you’re guaranteed bitterness, self-loathing, and constant ruminations of “what if”.
- Choosing not to choose (out of fear of looking yourself in the mirror if you fail) – is essentially choosing option #2; a choice of omission is a choice.
That’s the tradeoff. Now do the cost-benefit analysis and decide what tradeoffs you’re willing to accept.
As you can tell, I made my choice: I chose to finally heed the call to adventure and step into the arena – no more pseudonyms, no more masks, no more hiding…
And I invite you to join along for the ride!
If you’d like to follow along, subscribe to my email list below and follow me on X/Twitter. I’ll be posting regular updates about my challenges, achievements, failures, lessons, and everything in between.
See you on the other side!
Rafael