Putting Yourself Down

My favorite hobby is putting myself down. Comparing myself to others and comparing my accomplishments, or more so the lack of them, to those of others. I learned it when I was a kid when my parents pounded it into me, as well as my siblings, long and often, always making the other sibling and others better than each of us.

I've never understood why some parents to that, but then often it's what they learned, what they experienced and the only thing they know. That's what spouses and parents are about, replicating our families when we were young. Men often pick their wife to be their mother, or the opposite for some, and women often pick their husband to be their father or the image of them in their mind.

And if we've been subjected to that since we were very young, then it becomes ingrained, almost hardcoded in our mind where we do it when our parents aren't around and even when our parents are gone from life. It's what we know, sometimes it's all we know and it's hard to change.

Hard not just to be comfortable and satisfied with what we have done, how our life has turned out, and it's easy to put ourself down and feel like a failure. It always lurks in the shadow of our mind, ever present in our consciousness, and never ceasing to remind us about other, about ourself and who's better. Not us.

I often think this is what causing people to follow a life of self-destruction. Like that new or news, but I saw it in my brother and feel it in myself all too often. I've never lost the feeling and my Dad, when he was alive and we talked after he kicked me out, reminded me of it everytime.

And now with the Internet, it's so easy to find people who appear to be doing better, doing more and having a better life than me. It's so easy to feel you've failed, failed yourself in what you could achieve. It's like the person who asked the inventor about his new product, "How good is it?", and the inventor said, "Compared to what?'

We're the inventor of our own life, and we always keep asking ourself the same question about ourself and our life, "Compared to what?" That's we do. It's what's embedded in American culture, comparing, judging and proclaiming what or who's better or worse. We are a part of it and we do it too.

To ourself and our life. And all of the self-help books, programs, etc. don't and won't work. They only make it obvous to ourself and only makes it harder to overcome the thoughts and feelings. Those books, interviews, all of it, only reminds us and reinforces what we already think and feel.

We are what they teach us not to be or do. We are their examples. We are their stories which don't have good endings. And we their failures as our own failure. We try and have our moments, but the prevailing feeling and thought is failure. Pounded into us from when we first heard from our parents.

And in the end, we will likely say at best our life of ok, because in the end, it really doesn't matter what we think or feel anymore. There isn't any more to feel or think ourself a failure. It's the same end everyone faces no matter their life or how they thought or felt about it. We all just end with ok.