κάλλιστον

Perhaps I’m feeling macabre, but tonight I’m digging out my favorite spooky classical pieces and listening to them. So I thought putting together a top ten list of these would be fun while I drink my scotch. Note: These are not really in any particular order. I love them all.

September

Roman Marbled Glass Snake - Eastern Mediterranean or Italy, circa late 1st Century BC - early 1st Century AD

go-getter, strategist and mastermind on good&co

Český Krumlov

by desomnis

Combined with the following ask:

Do you have any tips for how to improve self-esteem and confidence? I think I may be an xNTJ but years of bullying, betrayal, depression, and bereavement have left me feeling pretty low and worthless.

A few thoughts below.

To my 20 year old self

You can be right and still lose the argument. How you communicate to someone and how you deliver the message is just as important as the contents of the message itself. If you disregard the nuances of other human beings and come off as a total asshole, they’ll completely shut down and reject your input no matter how great it is.

Don’t fight battles with no rewards. If people can’t stop you, they’ll try to distract you so you’ll trip over your own feet and sabotage yourself. Don’t let them.

Older people may be less intelligent than you, but they have more experience– listen and learn. Even idiots can teach you what not to do.

Shut up. Most situations don’t require your input, your action, your reaction, or your intervention. Often times it’s like throwing gas on a fire to put it out. If you’re patient and wait, the answers tend to reveal themselves or the problem will solve itself.

Always do your laundry, there’s nothing worse than running out of clean underwear.

On building self-esteem and confidence

Stop explaining yourself to people who have already made up their minds about you. It’s a waste of time so tend to the relationships with the people who genuinely care for your well-being.

Finish. Quitting is a pathological disorder that can spread to other areas of your life. If you quit at one thing, the odds are you have low resilience and you will give up at other endeavors in your life. No matter what– finish. Get to the end. No matter how imperfect you think the outcome will be, finish. You’ll either have a sense of accomplishment from having completed something, lessons learned from the failure, or both. 

Small victories build confidence. If you can’t do the small things correctly, you won’t be able to tackle the big things. If you can’t wake up in the morning and jog a mile consistently then you’re not going to be able to climb Mount Everest. Patience is key and biting off more than you can chew will often end in failure and demoralization. Practice makes perfect, and progress takes time. 

Pain is weakness leaving the body. Build your tolerance by trying new things outside of your comfort zone, push yourself when you feel like you want to quit, and confront the things you fear the most. Similar to lifting weights, the only way your body can grow stronger is by steadily increasing the weights until you can bear heavier burdens. The more you do this, the easier it becomes.

Be a thermostat, not a thermometer. That is, be consistent in your values, personality, and habits– don’t let your emotions and behavior mold to your environment because you’ll always be in a state of flux. It makes you vulnerable to other people dictating your moods.

Follow your heart but take your brain with you. Do the things you love but in a logical and planned way. Don’t question your goal if it’s what you truly want to do, but scrutinize your method because that’s what will determine success or failure.

On college

Evidence is more powerful than theory. In college and in the real world, you must be able to prove your abilities with evidence because just being “smart” isn’t enough. That evidence is superior performance, high grades, high test scores, and strong internships. You can’t stroll into a job interview and debate the interviewer, declare victory, and secure the position. Come with proof.  

Do well no matter what. Even if you’re unsure about your major, never let your performance slide because GPAs are cumulative. If you only do well in the subjects you love, it will reveal to employers that you have selective motivation. This is a problem because in the real world you won’t enjoy everything assigned to you even at a job you love and employers need to have confidence you can still succeed.

Who you know is as important as what you know. Connections matter in the real world, don’t overlook building relationships with people who will be your peers, your friends, future colleagues, and potential future bosses for the rest of your life and professional career.

Don’t fuck around. If you’re paying thousands of dollars in tuition and going into debt, make sure you pick a career that can sustain you after you graduate. No matter how much you love fine arts, if you go $100,000 into debt at 6.5% interest, your life will be extremely difficult. Find a balance between what you love and what can support you.

Just because you want something that happens to be the patriarchal norm doesn’t mean that you’ve been forced into wanting it by some sort of patriarchal agenda, and I stand by the belief that allowing a woman the freedom to CHOOSE the life she wants is feminist. 

Let me tell a story – when I was little, my mom wanted to keep me away from dolls because she didn’t want me to be exposed to the whole idea that women have to be mothers. She hated dolls as a kid and literally dismembered them and threw their arms and legs off her balcony. Clearly, not her thing. So, I had cars and loads of stuffed animals, but I didn’t have any dolls. I also didn’t socialize with little girls who had dolls, so I wasn’t being fed the “girls need to play with dolls” thing from any important source. But oh my god did I WANT dolls. I wanted them more than anything. And I kept being told that no, I couldn’t have dolls. So I did what I had to do as a 3 year old and I told every one of my moms friends that I wasn’t allowed to play with dolls and then that Christmas, I got dolls from every single one of them. And then I started getting dolls from my mom because oh my god was she embarrassed. 

So was it wrong that a 3 year old little girl genuinely wanted dolls? Was that 3 year old desire really the patriarchy at play? Should that 3 year old have been denied what she wanted just to resist the patriarchy?