You’ll do many things to benefit yourself. Some of those things truly are “for yourself” – purely to enrich your own existence. If you watch a beautiful sunset or enjoy a stunning piece of music, you are enriched. If you eat a little healthier and feel better as a result, that’s an improvement. Such things can truly be for you and you alone.
Other things don’t actually improve you much if other people don’t know about them. If you want to learn a new skill for the purpose of achieving more success in your career, then just learning the skill isn’t enough. Other people need to know about it, too. If become one of a handful of people in the whole world who knows a particular programming language, that doesn’t help me much if I keep it a secret!
Humans mess this up a lot – in both directions.
Many humans (not all, obviously) tend to over-signal the stuff that should be for the self, and under-signal the stuff that should be a part of their public brand. They seek validation because of the music they listen to or the food they eat, but then don’t appropriately broadcast their skills and abilities that they’ve learned specifically to help others!
I get it. Things like our aesthetic habits can be a way to find community – and if you’re doing that, great. But if you’re just sharing pictures of a salad to share them… well, take some time and try to be comfortable in your own presence for a while. And take that same impulse to share and direct it towards the things you feel less confident about. You don’t want to share that you’re learning something because that’s a level of vulnerability that isn’t carried by a picture from your jog. But that’s why you should do it.
Align the right patterns of self and signal. Those being out of whack is a cause of a great deal of ennui.
The Opportunity Machine 