#michaelbennett

CHAPTER 2: F*ck Self-esteem

People think self-esteem is the hallmark of good mental health, but, given the number of people who base their self-worth on having a good looks, a positive outlook, money, or just luck, that assessment doesn’t mean much.

The funny thing about needing to feel better about yourself is that it often starts with feeling that you are worse off than someone else.

Unfortunately, while boosting self-love in this way may make ake you feel better and act more confidently, it won’t stop you from acting like a jerk or overdepending on the support of your congregation and its leader, so this method may lead to Koran burnings, Kool-Aid parties, and other bad behaviour that feels good because you’ve disconnected your sense of value from your own ideas about good, bad, and common sense.

People argue that you can feel better yourself by finding what yoh enjoy and/or are best at, and devoting yourself to it, which would be perfectly good advice if it was something everyone could do. The sad truth is that some people don’t have any talent or interest, and sometimes life circumstances don’t allow them to develop whatever life talent they have. So while it’s certainly worthwhile to try to develop your talents and seek fulfillment, it’s dangerous to say you should be able to make it happen and thus make yourself responsible for producing a soultion you don’t control.

My goal is to figure out how I will ever, ever be a winner when there’s nothing about me or my life that seems interesting, attractive, or just plain worthwhile. — wrong goal.

If we let bad luck make us feel like losers, then feeling like a loser generates it’s own kind of bad luck.

Either you protect yourself from taking badluck personally, or taking it personally brings you down further.

If, on the other hand, they maintain a faith in their own capacity to connect, despitfe long periods of isolation and loneliness, and stick to their standards, they are mroe likely to get across the desert eventually and find the socially compatible oasis they deserve.

Forget about the goal of feeling good about yourself. Enjoy bursts of confidence when you can and take credit for you hard work, but beware making confidence a goal, because that implies control, responsibility, and blame when you can’t make it happen, and it’s wrong and cruel to blame yourself when your’re stuck with a hard life, crap luck, or some deadly combination of the two.

A good person is not someone who is trying to be happy, because that’s not possible, but someone who is trying to do right.

You might not always feel like a winner, but you’ll never lose.

The ability to look in the mirror or back on your life without horror ( a wish that can never be achieve)

Avoid adding to your troubles ( an aim can be achieve)

How to to do it: Replace SHOULD HAVE and COULD HAVE with JUST CAN’T and IT IS WHAT IT IS.

It was previously thought that lower self esteem, was the most dangerous condition, because it prevented peoplefrom developing the confidence required to make friends, influence people, and become a motivational speaker. OR at the very least, get laid.

Just because you’re successfully persuasive today doesn’t mean you will be tomorrow, and believing that recovering or maintaining this ability is all up to you just worsens your feelings of failure.

You can still believe in yourself, as long as you believe that your flaws and misfortunes are part of the package.

It may not be as easy or as much fun to win someone over as it would be if you were silver-tongued, but having a silver tongue is not the only way to be effective.

Don’t try to control your confidence in your power of persuasion, as much as you would wish for it. Instead, use whatever other methods you can find, even if they’re not interesting or fun, to get the job done.

To stop overthinking and trying to defeat themselves. – wished for.

The harder you try to project confidence, the more you get treated like poop.

Remember, persuasiveness is one of the those abilities that can do both good and harm.

Even if you get them to do things for you that they wouldn’t for someone else, their motivation will disappear if they think they don’t have your attention.

There are other ways to do it and feel good about your accomplishments instead of desperate about what you just can’t do.

Keep your emotions to yourself.

The fact is, however, that many people get relatively inarticulate when they’re anxious, and very few people are good at the art of speaking up in the face of authority without getting into trouble.

In reality, standing up to intimidation and facing down bullies is a bad goal. 

You’ve got other goals and oblgiation to pursue, and fighting battles with people you don’t like and aren’t going to change seldom makes sense, even if they’re smaller than you. 

The truth is, fighting back isn’t the antidote to humiliation and intimidation; it’s more often an accelerant. Instead, give thought to values and consequences. 

Ask yourself whether the fight is worthwhile and winnable by considering risks and worst-case scenarios and keeping your mouth shut to give yourself time to think. 

Strengthen your resolve, and not your muscles, and learn to beat bullies by remembering what’s important, and that humiliation isn’t.

To control anxious or deferential feelings that cause helpless paralysis -- wishing to avoid. 

Your goal then isnt’t to stand up to trouble, but to determine what if anything, you can say or do that won’t stir up trouble even more. 

If you know the battle is unwinnable, smile politely until you’re gone. 

You can always move on, but he’ll always be stuck in his own insanity. 

The other way to protect yourself, especially if a bully is irrational, is to wall off your negative, helpless emotions and feel proud of your ability to make the best of tough situations. 

Look confident and stand proud, regardless of how you feel. 

Build a boundary that lets the bully know that you value his opinion, but still judge yourself by your own standards, which, in this case, you’ve met. 

Keep your cool under fire - - ahievable

How to do it? -- Shut up until you’re ready to speak; don’t yell or act out becasue you're angry or tired. 

Until you can move on, bear the pain. 

You won’t be someone living with a disability, but someone whose disability is their life.

Instead, accept what you’ve already learned: that your disability will come and go and you’ll never control it completely. 

Fight the shame that comes with being ill by sharing as much with others as you think is appropriate according to your own standards of privacy, not the culture’s stigma. 

Don’t take pride in looking normal, but in how well you cope with abnormality, tolerate the burden of your illness, and get as mach as you can out of life. 

Take pride in small accomplishments that make up your everyday. 

Playing pretend, while fun for children and kinky adults, is usually destructive in everyday life. 

Letting them know what’s wrong is never a confession; it’s a proud statement of achivement and intention, and if they care about you, they’ll have your back.

Instead, build selfrespect on accepting your abnormality and knowing you’re competemd to make good decisions about it, regardless of what others think or how severly it limits you. 

Know how far you can push yourself without causing relapse.

Assemeble a circle of approving, helpful people. 

What makes parents most awesome, however, is not the power of love, as wonderful as that is. It’s the power of to love when love is doing no good, not take your kids susffering personally, survive, and keep on loving.  It’s loving parents of self-hating kids who are genuinely the most amaxing, specialest snowflake parents of all. 

Acknowledging limits is necessary for restricting the damage of caring too much about flaws and failures that can’t be helped. 

Develop your own objective methods for determining whether you or someone you care about is doing a good enough job and rely on the facts to tell you whether you should hold yourself responsible for whatever is going on, 

Regardless of whether your selfesteem is too low or too high, you can figure out how to make the best of bad situations, take pride in your effort, and have confidence in your ability to do the right thing.