One can control one’s self-image. But you don’t do it by slagging off on people who are happy and successful, or by expecting everything to be handed to you. You’re parents have done you a great disservice by supporting you like this.
The truth is, you’re a result of the decisions you make. Take some fucking responsibility for that and either be content with how your life is now, or change it, but don’t try to claim those of us that work and that understand the value of work, and understand a good home-work balance are the problem.
If being a zero bothers you, change it. You have the power to do it. Envision what you want your life to be, create a plan on how to achieve, create a sense of urgency for yourself, and then follow through on the plan. It isn’t complicated, hard, yes, but complicated no.
But don’t expect people to respect you when you do nothing to earn it. You’re a self-professed layabout and mooch. You aren’t showing us squares what for, you’re giving us a counter-example for our children. You’ve stated you are miserable. Most of the people like myself who have a good work ethic (not that I think you have the first fucking clue what that is) are happy, well-adjusted people.
You know jack-shit about me. Anyone who does, would never say something that delusional. I realize that someone like yourself thinks that the way to deal with adversity by throwing a tantrum. Here’s the thing though, you may not need my reality check. But you are completely dependent on mommy & daddy. That is pathetic. And I imagine your bride-to-be is either pathetic herself, or a gold-digger. I’m guessing she’s gone within a year of your parents passing, and she’ll probably be stepping out behind your back before your first anniversary.
Work ethic means you show up, you do what is expected of you, you keep your commitments.
Frankly, I have friends who live in artist’s colonies or do the RenFaire circuit - not exactly ‘corporate’ jobs - but they have a work ethic. A friend of mine is a novelist - it takes discipline to write novels. Often these people doing ‘non Corporate’ jobs put in more time and more effort than other people with a "good work ethic’ doing traditional work.
I also know people who do ‘traditional’ work with very high levels of commitment - people I suspect others would call ‘workaholics.’ IT VPs. Small business owners. People who are finishing email at 11pm and Twitter back into work on vacation. Believe it or not, they often produce at that level because they like it. It provides them with satisfaction. When they lose jobs (as many of them have recently) they don’t sit on their butts waiting for their severance to run out - they start companies, they consult, they network.
And I know people with little in the way of ‘work ethic’ - a friend living off his inheritance until it runs out and he needs to work again. A relative who spent months sponging off whomever she could. If you can make it work for you, AND are content doing it - more power to you. Myself, I’m really looking forward to being a couch potato in my retirement, but until then, I don’t have family money to keep me going, so I need to have enough of a ‘work ethic’ to hold a job.
Maybe, but what is left once manufacturing of practically everything is automated? We can’t all be machine repair people. There will likely even be machines to repair the machines, and machines to build other machines. We could all spend our time in learning and personal growth, and that may well be a fine thing to do, but there’s probably not a ‘living’ to be had.
Ugh. Why are they ‘less capable’ than you? Apparently they AREN’T - they are ‘differently capable’ than you. And that ‘differently capable’ has allowed them to function well where your ‘superior capability’ has gotten you - where? This used to drive me nuts in certain circles I traveled in where people thought that smart should be enough - and completely missed that ‘motivated, well groomed, and charismatic’ are at least as important in life as smart.
I also detest “I am so much smarter than the average person it’s hard for me to function amongst you lesser types which is why I’m so bad at school!” It’s the epitome of first world disease to me. My father is/was profoundly gifted (haven’t inherited a speck of that crazy inventiveness myself), skipped something like three or four grades, full ride scholarship to IIT-Bombay where he graduated second in his class and I never hear sh*t like that out of his mouth ever. Maybe it had something to do with growing up a in a mud hut.
I’m with you. I started working when I was fifteen in a greasy spoon, and I never found work soul-crushing, even the menial jobs I had before going into IT. I took pride in my work, wether it was flipping burgers or managing large IT projects. Aside from the paycheck, the sense of accomplishment, and knowing that my job allows me to do other things I love, it makes it worthwhile.
But I don’t think I could do the fun things all the time. I tried it once in my 20s. I lost my job. I was in a position where I had an extremely large cushion, and my plan originally was to spend 6 months playing video games and going dancing and pursuing other hobbies. I was working again in 6 weeks, I was so damn bored just playing. I think going long stretches withou being productive is bad for the psyche. I can’t imagine what a life spent doing nothing would do to your mental health.
Most of us aren’t machine-makers or factory workers now. We sell stuff to people, design stuff, write stuff, give people opinions on things.
More and more of work essentially revolves around creation of intellectual rather than physical property. When machines can write novels or invent new areas of science, I’ll worry.
There’s no secret about “dealing with it” at all. Sometimes you get what you want. Sometimes you don’t. Somethimes you get some of what you want. It’s just a fact of life, and by “dealing with it”, I mean you accept that not everything will be your way all the time. If we are talking about working with other people there is a thing called a concensus. You both get some of what you want. Neither gets everything but, they can live with it. That’s a kind of “dealing with it”. At work, there are some things that are actually intersting and fun. There are other things that you can’t stand. You “deal with it” by taking the good with the bad. You recognize that sometimes you have to do the hard things or the boring things, and you just do them. That’s “dealing with it”. It’s part of being an adult.
We’ve all had people who won’t “deal”, they want it all their way all the time. They won’t compromise, make concessions, or lift a finger to help anyone (including the people who helped or carried or covered for them). Some people call them jerks, or idiots, or “problem people”. We all have our own “charming” names for them. The best name for them would be “ex employee” or “That guy who just got fired”.
Life is a series of deals and compromises. You give up this to get that. You let an annoying thing slide because it isn’t worth the hassle. You learn to accept it and move on. That is “dealing with it”.
But attitude helps - which means being very careful that you don’t imply that other people are “lesser” - either by using those words or by thinking them to yourself.
After all, believing they are less capable than you - and you are not successful - leaves you as what - less than less capable?
Acknowledge YOUR strengths. Choose things that play to them - and your strengths may not be motivation and charisma. But acknowledge the value of other people’s strengths. For one thing, its the first part of the process of getting to trade on each other’s strengths.
Something odd I’ve noticed about myself is this: I’m a bit of an amateur artist, and I find that the times (rare) when I have lots of time off, I’m not very productive or creative at the art - I end up playing computer games or watching TV; it is those days when I’ve finished a hefty load of work that I get stuff done on my own as well.
What I think would be very difficult is the challenge of self-motivation for someone with infinite leasure time and no financial concerns. While such a person could be very creative, the chances are that they won’t be - and rhe fact is that a life without accomplishments isn’t satisfying.
No, that’s why I went back and said I didn’t mean it to sound as if I was jealous that they could get by in some ways, and I couldn’t… just that I more envy their “drive”.
Trust me, I mean it in a humble way, (one of my weaknesses being dislexic, is trying to aticulate what I’m thinking through writeing or typing).
Aren’t you glad you can cut loose from your mother and live your life the way you want to? We can all look back and find something our parents did that we think they could have done differently. Adulthood gives you the freedom to be less cautious, more masculine, or whatever you feel you were short-changed on in your youth.
Oh, I did. My first summer after my freshman year of college I got a job on an assembly line. I resented the hell out of the fact that I had to work for what I wanted. People that willingly went to jobs everyday had no souls, they sold out to the corporate machine, and they lived sad little lives full of mind-numbing television and booze. Society had gone to shit, and I lived in a world full of drones and automatons. I was WAY too clever for that crap.
(This may have a familiar ring to it, no?)
I got over that attitude really quickly when I realized that working made the difference between paying rent and living with my parents.
Yes it is. And if you truly wanted a serious discussion – one in which you were willing to give a fair hearing to people who disagreed with you – you wouldn’t have posted an OP in which you specifically stated that you were going to lie and insult people.
I’ve spent much of my adult life in and out of therapy, on and off a whole medications for depression. I was Baker Acted. Hell, I was homeless for a little while. I’ve still, at 39, got a pretty poor self-image. But you know what I found? Nobody can give you self-esteem. You either earn it by doing things you have reason to be proud of, or you don’t. No therapist will ever, ever help you more than you can help yourself.
In my case, at times I took pride in the fact that I was able to keep from getting fired from a job. I cried myself to sleep at night and fantasized about jumping in front of trains, but by fuck, I got my ass into work the next morning. And when I did get fired, I got my shit together enough to get a new job. Yeah, many of those jobs were lame and a bit demeaning. Shit, I was a 32 year old with an IQ of 130, and I was driving a goddamn taxi to pay 1/3 rent on crappy apartment. A lot of people might consider me an underacheiver. Fuck them. I know what I went through, and I know what I did, and I know I kept fighting and I know I’m better off now because of it.
Give yourself a goal and make yourself do it. If you fail, make a smaller goal and try that instead. But until you do something you are proud of, you’re going to continue to be miserable, ashamed and bitter; and you’ll deserve to.
Oh yeah, I didn’t come here and tell my story only to blame the past. My note was that I can relate to the OP, but don’t feel hostility towards people stating the obvious even if it’s something I don’t want to hear. That’s part of the problem.
But the past does give people better perspective. I urge my upstairs roommate to stop letting her kid sleep with her at night, just to fulfill her loneliness. But I can only help myself from this point on.
We can all give advice, but ultimately it’s something you have to work through on your own. You’ll have to do the heavy lifting yourself, because no one else can do it for you.
That sounds like a drag, I know, but there’s a benefit to it. You grow with a sense of pride, accomplishment, and maturity. Life is ultimately not about whether you win, but how you deal with adversity.
This whole discussion reminds me of my father in law. He’s retired now, and he always was what used to be called a “simple” man - basically borderline in intellect.
Yet he had a massive list of accomplishments under adversity that I could only imagine, moved from a small town in the middle of nowhere in Alberta hardly speaking a word of English (family were hardcore Ukranians), was able to get and hold a responsible manufacturing job his whole life in the big city, raised three children to middle-class standards of education, saved a pile of money (he ended up owning three investment houses and selling 'em a few years ago) - in short, he “dealt” very well, in spite of being practically retarted and having a serious speech impediment in an age which was not forgiving or accomodating of such difficulties - his own family (parents and sibs) openly shunned and scorned him his whole life as a “retard” (something my wife has never forgotten or forgiven), and yet they come a-begging to him to help them out (which he is happy to do - he’s that kind of guy).
Every time I start to think I have it hard, I look at guys like him. He “made it”. He can certainly be annoying (for one he has a habit of hoarding junk in my garage without asking me), but damn - he has gumption and he has a work ethic that puts me to shame. He knows my neighbours better than I do, now that he’s unemployed he’s always doing stuff for other people - fixing the drainpipes, that sort of thing.
