Why Is It Sometimes Easier to Act on Someone Else’s Instructions Than Our Own Desires?
I noticed a peculiar pattern throughout my career. Give me an assignment, and my innate discomfort in my own skin would seemingly disappear.
I remember setting up a camera in the high street to capture the hustle and bustle, or strolling into a large corporation where queues of people waited nervously to have their portraits taken.
I had a mission, handed down from the powers above, that seemed to put me in a state of complete confidence and control. My only concern was ensuring my subjects felt comfortable and relaxed, and I revelled in the satisfaction of impressing them with the final results.
Yet when I considered initiating my own projects, perhaps documenting interesting characters, as so many celebrated portrait photographers have done, my self-consciousness would poison the idea before it had even begun.
The thought of approaching strangers and asking to photograph them suddenly became incomprehensible.
Why should there be any difference? What was this cloak of confidence I had left hanging in the corporate cloakroom?
We imagine that acting independently affords us a freedom and satisfaction that following instructions cannot. We strive for freedom from bosses, autonomy from obligations, and the chance to cut the strings of expectation.
Other people’s demands feel restrictive, while our own whims seem liberating.
Yet my experience, particularly where social interaction is involved, often takes the opposite form.
Freedom from instruction doesn’t necessarily free me from inhibition.
Something curious happens when responsibility is transferred. I’m given more than an instruction. I’m given the gift of justification. Any enquiry about what I’m doing, or why I’m doing it, has an explanation conveniently contracted out to someone else.
When that external justification disappears, I’m suddenly exposed to the possibility that my own desires must be sufficient reason.
When someone instructs us to do something, we need only justify the action. When we choose to do it ourselves, we may feel compelled to justify the desire.
As an employee, I can be a photographer directing strangers, a journalist asking probing questions, or a researcher approaching people to canvass their opinions. Each role provides a recognised social explanation. I’m not necessarily revealing anything about myself. I’m simply fulfilling an obligation.
But take away the assignment and the same behaviour becomes strangely personal.
I want to photograph strangers. I want to capture the intimacy of other people’s worlds through their weathered faces. I want to ask a homeless man how his life unfolded, or an elderly woman what it feels like to have witnessed so much change.
Suddenly, I’m revealing something about myself. My curiosity, my preferences, perhaps even my values. I’m effectively announcing that I find another person’s life sufficiently interesting to warrant interrupting it.
Judgement of our preferences can feel far more intimate than judgement of our competence.
Psychologists describe the spotlight effect, our tendency to overestimate how much other people notice and evaluate our behaviour. But the imagined audience doesn’t feel like the entire problem. It’s what we believe that audience is judging. The employer hasn’t made me any more competent, nor has the stranger become any less intimidating. The only thing that’s changed is whose reasons I’m acting upon.
Why should someone else’s reasons carry greater authority than my own?
There are practical explanations. An assignment reduces decision-making, establishes expectations and provides accountability. Professional experience creates confidence. For many people, external demands are themselves a source of anxiety, while independent action feels liberating.
But none of these entirely explains why I can perform an activity confidently on behalf of someone else, yet hesitate to undertake it for my own satisfaction.
External authority doesn’t simply give us permission. It relieves us of having to grant permission to ourselves.
We seek independence believing it will allow us to act more freely. Yet removing external authority can also remove the psychological protection that made certain actions possible.
We become conscious not only of our choices, but of ourselves as the chooser.
Some of us can possess the competence, opportunity and genuine desire to act, yet still struggle to regard our own wishes as sufficient authorisation.
When I think back to the countless faces I captured over the years, frozen in time while I hid comfortably behind the lens, I wonder how many projects I might have pursued had I simply granted myself permission.
What if my internal voice could become the authority issuing instructions from within? What fascinating projects might unfold if I could approach my own curiosities with the same confidence I once brought to a paid assignment?
To become both the person commissioning the work and the person entrusted to carry it out. To treat my own interests as legitimate assignments, worthy of the same commitment I once reserved for somebody else’s expectations.
That is a form of freedom I have yet to properly explore.
For decades, I’ve watched a homeless man wheel his life’s possessions around on an old pushbike, waiting until dark to set up camp in a quiet field or underground car park, before moving on again ahead of first light.
A man seemingly caught between freedom from authority and the narrow confines of social exile.
I’ve often wondered how he reconciles his circumstances. What aspirations did he once hold? What decisions, accidents or misfortunes led him here? Does he experience his independence as freedom, or as something imposed upon him?
I’ve spent years inventing a story about a man whose actual story I know nothing about.
Perhaps one day I’ll give myself permission to ask, and let him decide whether my curiosity deserves an answer.
