Criticize yourself!

Against a backdrop of relentless self-affirmation over the last couple of decades, a primary skill has fallen by the wayside (and unnecessarily so!). It is the ability to take a look at oneself, and honestly recognize that you suck. Not overall, not as an entire person, but in particular skills or characteristics.

Why should this be so hard? No one can possibly excel at everything, or even most things. Further, only by recognizing shortcomings can anything be done about them. Even taking the shortsighted, selfish point of view that an individual would be prefer to not be viewed negatively in any way, the best way to avoid this perception is to figure it out yourself and change it (if possible) before others notice. And yet, time after time, people frantically attempt to excuse or deny their weaknesses, which only makes the problem more obvious to others.

I believe this tendency can be traced to the ubiquitous and mindless mandate to “believe in yourself”. I’m not trying to say that “believing in yourself” is a bad thing. The problem is in equating “believing in yourself” with “everything I do is great and I’m great at everything”. Can’t we teach ourselves and our kids to recognize that all of us suck at different things? That successful people not only build on their strengths, but also seek to identify, and then address their weaknesses? That the shame is not in having weaknesses, but instead in denying them?

The two most important principles for a happy life

I try to prepare my kids for life with these two statements. They’re sick of hearing them, but I’m OK with that; it shows they’re listening at least a little bit.

1. Life isn’t fair.

2. If you didn’t earn it, nobody owes it to you.

If you can consistently accept and apply these statements,  you can avoid wallowing in the victim mentality that causes so many people to be unhappy.

Feeling included by exclusion.

The “need to belong” is well understood by most people, at least instinctively if not objectively. But if membership in some sort of group or “tribe” defines belonging and self-identification, aren’t we really defining ourselves by exclusion; i.e. who doesn’t belong to our chosen group or identity?

Take any identifiable grouping of people; how about geeks (techies, nerds, … etc.)? We tend to compare ourselves favorably (putting myself in this group, here!) against the “technically unenlightened” all the time. Not that we do it obviously or publicly all the time; it’s more the smug inner sense of superiority over the unenlightened Luddites that provides the emotional payoff.

I would propose that this “exclusionary superiority” concept is a primary factor of our need to belong, and that there is evidence of it in most social structures. You can see it in the white collar worker who looks down on the “people who have to work with their hands”, while it’s also evident in the factory worker who mocks the engineers who “have no idea how this machine really works.” It’s patently obvious in gated communities and country clubs, but just as present in teenage cliques, music fans (“the band you like is a bunch of posers”) and activists (“obviously you’re not really as committed to <insert cause here> as we are.”)

The point is that regardless of how much we may not want to admit it, a sense of belonging is heavily derived from a feeling of superiority and exclusion.

Be most suspicious of those who are most suspicious of others.

You’ve probably met individuals who always tend to think others are out to con them or cheat them. While they may be right some portion of the time, this characteristic is a sure sign that at the very least, this person’s mindset runs to a strong awareness of, if not a proclivity for, taking advantage of others.

People who aren’t polite and reasonable often say the things that need to said.

Have you ever been in a meeting or with a group of friends, and the “loose cannon” of the group spews out the nasty truth that everyone is thinking, but is afraid to say? These folks perform a useful public service; because they either don’t care what people think, or don’t stop to consider the consequences, they bring the point into the conversation, while allowing everyone else to benefit from it while avoiding the responsibility for it.

If you want to know someone’s character, give them a million dollars and check back in a year.

We like to think of the general population as exercising reasonable amounts of restraint and personal responsibility; further, we subconsciously prefer to assume that some measure of moral character is the motivation for the exercise of said restraint. However, I suspect that much of what keeps the average person from wildly irresponsible behavior is instead the simple inability to finance it. I would propose that even a brief and very informal survey of say, lottery winners, would provide some evidence to support this theory.