One of the benefits I’ve found from keeping my identity small doesn’t seem to be reducible to keeping my object-level views honest. Namely, I’ve recently identified areas of my life in which my identity was preventing me from trying new things, e.g. I thought of myself as the kind of person who didn’t care about nutrition or exercise. I wasn’t mistaken about any property of the world but I was supplying myself with excuses for not expanding my comfort zone. (Edit: Academician describes this happening to him in this post which I think is a useful follow-up to Keep Your Identity Small.)
One of the benefits I’ve found from keeping my identity small doesn’t seem to be reducible to keeping my object-level views honest. Namely, I’ve recently identified areas of my life in which my identity was preventing me from trying new things, e.g. I thought of myself as the kind of person who didn’t care about nutrition or exercise. I wasn’t mistaken about any property of the world but I was supplying myself with excuses for not expanding my comfort zone. (Edit: Academician describes this happening to him in this post which I think is a useful follow-up to Keep Your Identity Small.)