There is a large problem with my generation and our parent’s grasp on self-esteem. Worth is derived from how one feels about the work they have done which translates into what they think of themselves and their ability. If one skips over the first step and gives themselves vapid praise then one can begin to skip the work entirely, habitually, and create an inflated ego. One is always more interested in their ego than the work as the work only leads to the ego’s pleasing, unless a person trains themselves aware of this and creates a worth in work and results. My generation was praised for existing, which is awesome but we did nothing for it, and thus had high self-esteem. Everybody got a trophy, we couldn’t make fun of each other, bullying became an obsessed issue instead of results, and by the time we hit high school and college we were confused. Why didn’t everything just happen wonderfully? They told us to be whatever we wanted and now our work isn’t good enough… but we’re the best? This comes to a concept called growth mindset versus set mindset. The set mindset is the spoiled one that is prevalent and has created a generation of people who suck at their work and still believe they’re great.
There is an addiction here and a festering which follows and is surrounded by honest confusion. When someone has a high feeling, they won’t give it up easily. This occurs in ego. As we grew up being told that we were great, we were not giving that up; the same as a heroine addict won’t give up their pleasure trigger until tooth and nail are ripped from them. It is one’s highest enjoyments and callings. The problem’s reoccurring outlet comes from where one finds their validation. The explosion of social media reflects this, it’s not simply an amazing new thing. We were told how great we are by our parents and now that we’re older, we need a new source to feed this worth. Granted, many of us have internalized this and refill our own need for validation with our thoughts and sense of self but the addicts who don’t self-medicate, need others to see how great we are. Too much praise is a shitty and toxic thing as it makes real worth from reality unimportant. This is a problem with parental coddling, video games, fantasizing excessively, occasionally comics and books, and drug abuse.
There is a whole entitlement which is created from this pile. Consider the hook-up culture and all that crap about “friend-zoned” that men who are only nice to women because they think they deserve sex. The sloth and disrespect, the lack of empathy or understanding is appalling, and yet very common. There is a high relation to someone having an extremely high sense of self-worth with no reason to prove it to someone just expecting another person give them an orgasm. It’s ridiculous and totally characteristic of this trophy syndrome. The idea that everyone gets a damn trophy for showing up has encouraged the entire millennial generation that they’re great because they have an ass to sit on. While Im very for the absolute brilliance and serenity to the bliss and consciousness of how wonderful it is to simply exist, this is not a Buddhist Zen Issue. The contrast lays strongly,among tons of other factors, in the fact that children were told this instead of concluding so themselves.
Strangely there is a guilt element involved as well. Look at all the praise and glory we believed we deserve! And then look at the crap we produce, what is this nonsense? Reality really blows sometimes. In this instance many now adults feel worthless because their efforts cannot amount to what they have grown to have faith in; they’re amazing! And the irony is so thick that my typing might begin to look like a cat walked on my keyboard. Goal here was to make kids perform better from their higher sense of self-esteem and a ton of them feel like failures since they have never been able do anything which claims as great as their parent’s praise. In a time when bi-polar and depression are being misdiagnosed and self-diagnosed so much that they’re hot topics for click bait and marketing, its worth considering that we should tell our kids they suck at baseball when they suck at baseball. The idea of them trying harder to do better has become a spoken empty action and as Jim Jefferies says,”America has raised a generation who’re very confident even when they fuck up; that’s being a bunch of assholes.”. I am not very good at baseball.
There is even a dynamic of treachery involved. If one tries and fails then the mothers, fathers, coaches who all told them they’re great are now liars… or have we let them down? So be lazy. The world never traveled is the world never failed. Its very important to value integrity over social approval or even past contingency. Humans have this tendency to need to make sense to themselves, we tell our life tale in our head to ourselves as something which both matters and has coherence.
When we must call old gifts and praises as empty and false after we readily accepted and smiled at the glee, it makes a person feel like a piece of poop. It also ruins the ability of a person to see themselves doing well in the immediate future, a crotch-shot to one’s volition and will. But it is more true and that short step backwards unlocks gates ahead.
The answer is to find worth in content. A normal exercise for someone who is self-deprecating and lacks self-esteem is to run through their mind with good things they have actually accomplished. A very good thing to do is to imagine if they did more great things, how would they feel. Separate and isolate the second and you have stems of poison as aforementioned minus the social drug part. When a person writes, works, creates, or DOES then they have content to reflect on. Without this, a person is ego, memory and assumption; what they can do doesn’t mean a damn thing compared to what they have done or are doing. A person must have a sense of worth in doing above compliments; let your story compliment and bring you worth then call the rest bullshit before that tale agrees.
some related readings
http://www.newsweek.com/robert-samuelson-stuck-post-crisis-gloom-67731
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/04/david-mcraney-self-enchancement-bias/
