As it explains in this article, self compassion is healthier than self esteem.
Honestly, a huge part of me can not get on board with the plethora of self-help and LoA beliefs because they all seem to bloat your self esteem up which bleeds into narcissistic behaviors and thoughts. Then, when you fail to meet your expectations how do you feel?
What I wanted to say about our success driven culture is: they never seem to consider that success is piggybacked on the people beneath the successful – mostly. Isn’t it that way?
Let me give some examples. If I wanted to write a self help book what would be the cost? A person could make millions because you would be selling that book to a massive group of people who feel they need guidance to get them out of some kind of suffering. And yet, the reading of that material does not at all guarantee their success.
If someone wants to be a game producer? Now they have to gather an audience of would be gamers who will spend hours of their life absorbed into an activity that could potentially threaten their life and relationships.
Well that is actually pretty much the gist of how I see success and it’s pretty depressing. No matter how I spin it or see it there is always someone who suffers on the other end feeling deprived. Growing up I’ve always been told I’m depressed or depressing but I never seen it that way. Why? Because it’s not really depressing for me to be realistic sometimes. It’s only a lack of acceptance that makes realism seem bad.
But more than this?.. The thing is what most don’t seem to realize is that at the end of the day what will matter more is your relationships to other people. How you will be remembered. Not how much stuff you got or how much you accomplished.
I saw another video the other day that also shares this perspective on self esteem and success. Let me share that too…
It brought me some feeling of relief and gave me a sense of realism again. Because nothing is worse than feeling like you’re not good enough. Trying too hard is like saying, “If I push myself to be more than I am then I must not be okay where I am or who I am.”. Something like that. And doesn’t that just feel exhausting and crappy??
The reason I feel this way is because I see the drive or want to be successful as exhausting and another part of me just wants me to forget it all together. At least, the want to be successful in certain avenues. Namely, I want to give up the want to make a video game website for a few reasons. One, is that I can never amount realistically to the vision in my mind. The work load is simply overwhelming. The other is that I can’t get my twin brothers opinion on literally anything I do. He also makes some backhanded (or is it underhanded?) remarks at times that says to me he doesn’t know how to be supportive. And it really sucks because I would THINK he would share this dream too since he is a gamer himself but nope. He only wants me to take on the work load all by myself then if it doesn’t pan out and pay out well or at all guess what? I get blamed for it at all. And our dream of getting out of the rat race is shot to hell.
So with that, if I really ask myself if it’s worth taking that kind of crap or stress honestly? The answer is no. And now I have to come to a place to try to resolve this issue internally. If I can’t follow something I was passionate about at first and really love it, what do I do now?
I laugh almost with a sense of despair underneath thinking: give up like most people do and resign to the fate that it just isn’t going to work like I want? Besides. Do we really want to push that agenda that will only damage people more in the future anyway??
I think there’s a lot more I want to say but it comes down to a matter of personal resolution. Which is pretty freaking painful right now…