You are NOT safe and you are NOT good enough

I'd just like to add that being honest with ourselves doesn't have to be brutal. I know what I need to work on to improve myself, but I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

If you listen to Watts, one of his discussions was in the pointlessness of trying to change oneself. The person who you are trying to change, is the one who is "not good enough" to begin with. While many would knee-jerk react to this by saying it's all pointless and getting depressed, Watts says this should be a major relief! You don't have to become a different person, because you who you are!

It reminds me of Einstein saying that you cannot fix a problem with the same level of thinking that created it.

This may seem contradictory, but I personally feel that we're all capable of being better. Just because we cannot change who we are, doesn't mean we cannot strive to be the best "us" that we can be!

Changing something out of fear, will only get you a fear-based change. If you can move past the fear, you may find a different path that couldn't be seen before.

This is just my opinion, and if I'm way off, feel free to say so. I apologize if I butchered the Watts and Einstein quotes, or missed the points with them completely, lol!

Brontyn wrote: Changing something out of fear, will only get you a fear-based change. If you can move past the fear, you may find a different path that couldn't be seen before.

I specifically wanted to thank you for this section. Well said.

I'd type that quote by Morgan Freeman in the Shawshank Redemption, if it wasn't so overused and if I could remember it. Here goes.

"Something something ... living, or so and so .... something dying." - Red

LOL!

Oh, Jedi, you warm my heart.

What are the positives we can take from this? What good information and insight can we glean?

Brontyn wrote: If you listen to Watts, one of his discussions was in the pointlessness of trying to change oneself. The person who you are trying to change, is the one who is "not good enough" to begin with. While many would knee-jerk react to this by saying it's all pointless and getting depressed, Watts says this should be a major relief! You don't have to become a different person, because you who you are!

This reminds me also of the movie Fight Club, when Tyler Durden says "self-improvement is masturbation!", referring to the fact that improvement for the sake of improvement is meaningless. Sacrifice is only meaningful if it has a purpose.

Hating yourself for not fitting a mold is a waste of time. You don't "rage against the machine" by becoming a cog in a newer, shinier one. Finding what you truly want, however, and doing it, should be a joyous experience, regardless of the sacrifice and frustration involved. And no amount of complacency or, conversely, hatred, is going to get it done. Action, however, will.

I love how everyone reacts differently in the light of their own existential nature. This thread honestly reminds me of a comic I saw earlier this week.

Hehe,

Obi: "Don't rest on your laurels and pat each other on the back just for your own comfort"

Folks "Stop being negative!, Don't be afraid of who you are!, Don't let others judge you"

Well, I think his point was made for him {-_-}

Though I believe I more or less agree with the "Essence" of Obi's message...

wasting the very little bit of time that you have.

Little? Perhaps my span is short compared to say, a rock, it's still the longest bloody thing I'll ever do.

I don't wanna be liger poop.

JamesSand wrote: Hehe,

Obi: "Don't rest on your laurels and pat each other on the back just for your own comfort"

Folks "Stop being negative!, Don't be afraid of who you are!, Don't let others judge you"

Well, I think his point was made for him {-_-}

I can't speak for everyone else, but I don't take any issue with the assertion that we need to be active and grow and change, I just find that his motivation came from a place of negativity rather than of happiness or hope. I find that while negative emotions can be highly motivational to spur a person on the results are usually not as good as when they are motivated by positive emotions.

Goken wrote:

JamesSand wrote: Hehe,

Obi: "Don't rest on your laurels and pat each other on the back just for your own comfort"

Folks "Stop being negative!, Don't be afraid of who you are!, Don't let others judge you"

Well, I think his point was made for him {-_-}

I can't speak for everyone else, but I don't take any issue with the assertion that we need to be active and grow and change, I just find that his motivation came from a place of negativity rather than of happiness or hope. I find that while negative emotions can be highly motivational to spur a person on the results are usually not as good as when they are motivated by positive emotions.

Donkeys can be motivated to move forward with a carrot or a stick. I prefer the carrot, but I don't deny the effectiveness of the stick either. Ideally, we learn to use both.

Donkeys can be motivated to move forward with a carrot or a stick. I prefer the carrot, but I don't deny the effectiveness of the stick either. Ideally, we learn to use both.

Speaking for the Donkeys...

The image that springs to mind whenever I hear this is a carrot on a string that the donkey chases, unable to obtain.

It's not hard to end up resenting the carrot after a while.




This is getting away from the OP, I suppose I'm just musing on whether motivation to achieve something unattainable is as bad as motivation to avoid something inevitable

JamesSand wrote: The image that springs to mind whenever I hear this is a carrot on a string that the donkey chases, unable to obtain.

It's not hard to end up resenting the carrot after a while.

This is getting away from the OP, I suppose I'm just musing on whether motivation to achieve something unattainable is as bad as motivation to avoid something inevitable

Anyone who's ever trained an animal knows that eventually you do give them the carrot, for the exact reason you stated. If they never get it they'll stop being motivated by it.

we're slightly more complicated than donkeys but ok, my response is that if the donkey believes itself to be just fine the way he is, he wont give a sh!t about that carrot!

ok he might eat it if you give it to him for free without any effort on his part, but why would be uncomfortable and exert himself for something that he doesnt need and doesnt even really want that much?

i mean, i dont have a malibu barbie with a glitter convertable and thats OK - im just fine without one and no matter how much glitter you use i am not going to make any kind of effor to have one

and thats how we all are: no one really works hard for anything when they think they are ok without i t, just as they are, thats simply how we are wired - we work hardest for things when we recognize that we lack them and believe that we should have them or would be be better off if we had them

we might really enjoy some particular activity, like playing the guitar, and there will be plenty of times when we play simply because we enjoy the experience of playing

but guitar is a skill, and during the process of developing ANY skill, you reach points where the thing becomes HARD

eventually, getting better becomes so damn hard and uncomfortable that the only reason we continue is because we know that we're NOT GOOD ENOUGH and we are not willing to accept that

whenever we get "good enough", we become good enough to quit
thats actually what "good enough" means, by definition

in life, we never fully catch up to the entirety of our circumstances - or to say it another way, theres always some area that could AND SHOULD be improved because our lives tend to get more complex and more nuanced as we go forward

the complexity should grow as our competence grows
or you could say that as we mature we are able to live up to higher standards

about being negative, and hating oneself: thats not at all what i meant

i did say "brutally honest" and i know that very often when people use that phrase they really just want an excuse to be brutal, and thats definitely not what im getting at

maybe i should have said "unflinchingly honest" or "honest without self-pity"

speaking from my experience its very difficult to be unflinchingly honest, because it means not hiding from the legitimate short comings of my own character and personality

and i mean the real ones, the ones that manifest through my choices and actions in such a way as to sabotage elements of my personal life and relationships

its difficult because there is a sort of deflecting mechanism thats not even fully conscious which works to shelter me from the truth of these flaws by never fully acknowledging them

but that sheltering only prolongs the suffering, because there are certain things about myself that could change and that should change, and that will not change until i change them

and this is normal for everyone; you can try to dodge what i am saying by framing it as if its nothing more than my own personal, subjective view, but if youre honest with yourself you'll recognize bits of your own life in these words as well, because at a certain level, we're not very different from one another

none of this means that anyone should despise their own being
a lot of us have to deal with some rather deep seated feelings of inadequacy and even self loathing

for the most part this goes back to the adults we had in our lives when we were very young, who either didnt know how to nurture effectively or just didnt care, and its a lot to work through

i do believe that we have to develop a foundation of actively loving ourselves - of choosing consciously to love and nurture ourselves, before we can be self critical in a resilient and useful way - if we revel in self abuse it just grinds us down eventually

but that conscious self love should not be confused with self-coddling, and i think it way too often is

there have been a lot of thoughtful replies in the topic and i appreciate everyones input!

im not going to respond directly to every post because i think that would be too much, but i do want to respond to rex's comic, which i loved reading!

Rex wrote: I love how everyone reacts differently in the light of their own existential nature. This thread honestly reminds me of a comic I saw earlier this week.

this is the perfect example of what i am talking about actually - i mean its spot on

look its easy to say "well i guess i just want TV and booze more than being rich or beautiful" but thats bullshit; nobody really wants to watch tv and get drunk more than they want to be healthy and valued by others and to have control over their own lives

its just that tv and booze are EASY: they are convenient and accessible and they pass the time, and thats why we use them - to pass the time in a comfortable, hopefully pleasant way

but passed time does not come back

the kids in that comic feel like they have all the time in the world, because thats how we all feel especially when we're young, and so its easy for them to waste in on crap

but TV and booze are never ever going to return our investments, and if we let forty or fifty years of life go by thinking that we're "ok" and "theres nothing to do and nowhere to go" so lets just relax, watch some TV and drink some booze...

man, we're going to resent the existence of TV and booze altogether, and resent ourselves and all the time that we wasted being silly children who really believed this idea that our time wasnt really important

there ARE things to do and places to go, and many of them take tremendous effort and tremendous risk, it takes a strong motivation to get us those places, and they are good places to be but you dont get there if you think youre already "good enough" lol no exceptional person was ever "good enough" thats how they got to be exceptional- and why wouldnt you strive to be exceptional if you can be?

thats the idea of this topic

I definitely agree with your message, OB1. We should not always be content with "good enough" and we should seek to improve, especially in areas that are causing us or others grief or discomfort.

During this pursuit of bettering ourselves, I don't believe that means we have to become more complex or sophisticated. I actually believe that a lot of improvement comes from simplifying our lives. In our pursuit of status, wealth and titles, we often don't realize how much stress we are creating for ourselves. We continually set the bar higher and higher until we eventually feel inadequate all the time. Sometimes improvement comes from recognizing the areas you will never excel at and accepting that it is okay.

I don't think we should drink booze and sit in front of the TV all day, but I don't think we need to strive to be the best at everything either.

To use the guitar example, I play guitar and bass and the banjo. I don't play any of them exceptionally. In fact, I barely play the bass well enough to be on stage occasionally with other musicians and the guitar and banjo are nothing more than a hobby. But for me, that is "good enough". I have no need or desire to be any better than I am because I get enjoyment out of it where I am at now. If my livelihood depended on it, I might be more motivated, but as of right now it is just a great way to entertain my 5 year old niece or provide some entertainment around a campfire.

I don't think we should drink booze and sit in front of the TV all day, but I don't think we need to strive to be the best at everything either.

What's stopping you from being the best at drinking booze and sitting in front of TV?

Having consumed all of the alcohols, and having an encyclopaedic knowledge of every HBO and Netflix series is considered something of status in some regions :dry:



I wonder if they should come up with different words for "What we want to be good at" and "what we want other people to think we are good at"

In reference to the OP, that's the great irony of life: No one gets out alive.

I just have to say that I find it amusing that your signature has a link to a psych central post about challenging negative self talk. But then maybe you posted in that forum saying some of the same things you said here.

I hear what OB1 is saying, and there is no denying that this is a method for motivation to change, but I think it is just that: one method. I think there are other methods that function as well. Maybe you need to get through a certain number of changes before your methodology can switch, but I've never been a fan of the mentality that human beings only do things because they have to. That would, quite literally, make is no different than animals. True, we are animals, but much like rain being water but not all water being rain, that's only part of the truth. Not saying we're better, in many ways we are considerably worse; just different.

This is what I was trying to convey when I said changes based in fear, only yield fear-based changes. There are many different types of motivation factors for change. Fear, anger, love, or just a simple desire for improvement.

One could argue that the paradox of my argument is how can something be improved if it was not initially flawed? To that I would say that something could be good enough, or even great the way it is, but still stand improvement.

We are playful creatures, and I've found many of the things we do are more motivated by the desire to overcome boredom, than a driving force to make ourselves better. We've created a whole society that makes it easy to take daily activities out of our daily routine, then put them back in at the gym, in a safe, controlled, and easy environment, but still spend most of our time just staving off the boredom.

If we lived in a Eutopia, I personally believe we'd sill have people who want to contribute. Even with all their needs met, I think people would still want to grow, learn, and add to themselves and to society, all of this without the need for it, and without seeing themselves or the society as flawed.

Art for instance, though currently it is done many times simply to put food on the table, is a representation of this. If you fed, clothed, and supplied all the needs and wants to the artist, would they not still have a desire to create?

Just my opinion, and I've been told more than once that I have an oversimplistic view of things.

I mean it's exactly how to motivate anyone. Casinos used to (idk if they still do) rig machines to let new players win a small amount early, and then let them plug away at a chance to win big; similarly, if drug sellers can get a client addicted, they'll have buyer for life.
Back to the OP, well if there isn't intrinsic meaning to life, you make your own, so what are you going to make it?
Liger poop or something more?
It's up to you. And the Liger, I guess.