In his talk, Alain De Botton makes the point that we live in a highly civilized society. There are such high standards of what is and what is not considered "success" that people are rarely able to decide that for themselves. In everything we do, the person that is your biggest critic is you. De Botton said that more suicides happen in uppity societies because everyone takes their failures SUPER personally. They don't see it as a learning experience, rather a piece of them that's died.
What we fear more than the act of failing is the judgement and ridicule that comes after it. People are viscous to each other. From personal experience, what's even worse than someone's judgement being completely obvious, is when they try to hide it in one of two ways; 1) Being overly supportive. "Oh you'll do better next time, I'm sure!" "They don't know what they're losing, anyways." "It wasn't that big of a deal, anyways." Like, NO. I know I messed up and you telling me that it'll be better doesn't help how I'm feeling right now. Especially when I know you're judging from the sidelines. 2) Completely ignoring that it even happened, and then bringing it up right as the failure is starting to fade. This is pretty self-explanatory, and I know every single person has dealt with this at least once.
People need to be more selfish when it comes to defining "failure". When I say selfish I don't mean being a buttmunch to everyone else to lift your own spirits, I mean take a second to look deep inside yourself and figure out what you really pin value to. Is it financial success? Familial happiness? You need to find what will make you truly happy and work towards that.
One thing that De Botton said that I agree wholeheartedly with is that you can't win at EVERYTHING. He said that as humans, we think we know what "success" is. Success is being the best in every aspect of your life. You can't have total perfection. It's just not possible. If you win at your career, you may not be happy with your family situation. You have to be able to brush past the negative and move on.
The term "loser" has a much more negative connotation than I think it should have. Take Hamlet, for example. He lost majorly. Like... Oh man. He lost a lot. But that doesn't make him a loser, ya know? I just feel like "loser" as a term is thrown around too easily. I don't know anymore. I've got nothing else to say.
What we fear more than the act of failing is the judgement and ridicule that comes after it. People are viscous to each other. From personal experience, what's even worse than someone's judgement being completely obvious, is when they try to hide it in one of two ways; 1) Being overly supportive. "Oh you'll do better next time, I'm sure!" "They don't know what they're losing, anyways." "It wasn't that big of a deal, anyways." Like, NO. I know I messed up and you telling me that it'll be better doesn't help how I'm feeling right now. Especially when I know you're judging from the sidelines. 2) Completely ignoring that it even happened, and then bringing it up right as the failure is starting to fade. This is pretty self-explanatory, and I know every single person has dealt with this at least once.
People need to be more selfish when it comes to defining "failure". When I say selfish I don't mean being a buttmunch to everyone else to lift your own spirits, I mean take a second to look deep inside yourself and figure out what you really pin value to. Is it financial success? Familial happiness? You need to find what will make you truly happy and work towards that.
One thing that De Botton said that I agree wholeheartedly with is that you can't win at EVERYTHING. He said that as humans, we think we know what "success" is. Success is being the best in every aspect of your life. You can't have total perfection. It's just not possible. If you win at your career, you may not be happy with your family situation. You have to be able to brush past the negative and move on.
The term "loser" has a much more negative connotation than I think it should have. Take Hamlet, for example. He lost majorly. Like... Oh man. He lost a lot. But that doesn't make him a loser, ya know? I just feel like "loser" as a term is thrown around too easily. I don't know anymore. I've got nothing else to say.