While this might be true to some extent, I don't care. I still prefer the ambient positivity of classic self improvement. When you tell yourself that you suck you actually do suck then. When you tell yourself you're great you got at least a chance to become great.
Actually - I kindof liked it. I'm very argumentative - and I'm happy to play devil's advocate. The article suggests that you use cognitive dissonance - rather than telling yourself you're awesome and then feeling sucky because you don't live up to that -- tell yourself you suck and then feel better / prove yourself wrong. Interesting food for thought at least
I don't know - I find that telling yourself you're great just leads to ambiguity; I mean, what exactly are you great at?
As an observation (and whether or not it's right), we tend to view the world in terms of people who 'are' great or people who 'suck at' things, if you see what I mean. As such, "I'm so great - why can't I write this parser" becomes a much less helpful notion than "I suck at writing parsers" because the former implies failure whereas the latter implies a much greater scope for improvement.
I admit that it's all a bit hand-wavey, but by and large I find that my positive thoughts tend to be general ("Ain't life grand?", "Man, this world is awesome") whereas the negatives often settle on specifics ("My handwriting is embarrassing!", "I don't comment my code nearly enough") - I think we can all agree that knowing specifically where things are going wrong is far more useful than knowing were they're going right in general.
I'm don't think I would call this "self-help". Sure, it seems that people with low self esteem feel worse if overly complimented, but how can people like that raise their self esteem if they think they're no good? Isn't that the real problem, and not how they feel at any one time?
Weird, but lately I've been telling myself I suck. It was partly a joke, partly a reaction to other people, when they happened to be a lot better at something than I am. Surprisingly, this approach really helps concentrating and actually doing something to not suck anymore.
So the thing is to tell yourself you suck - having in mind, that at least you know you do. Because most people don't.
The articles thesis is ok, but the hook sucks. When was positive thinking ever about blind optimism? I thought it was about altering your perspective to realize your assumptions aren't clear and obvious. "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggonit people like me!" was never the point. The point was that your negative perspective is often relative.
You might think, "this cruise isn't as fun as I thought it would be." Which can either lead you to think "this sucks" or "maybe if I take this elevator below the passenger decks, hey a ping pong table... why are their Mexicans lined up along the wall... maybe I should go back up." (sorry, I have a better example from when I used to be a bit depressive, but I can't remember it.)
Also, I expect that what works has a lot to do with the personality type you match.
[addendum: It's as the guy who moved to speak to a new person every day for thirty days. I doubt he tells himself he sucks at talking to girls. More likely he recognizes the fear, chooses it is something he wants to do, and speaks. (Boy that can be hard.) Huh, I'm struggling to point out the article title and hooks betray none of the nuance.]
I'm not sure how prudent or productive it is to insult yourself - ostensibly, it's a recipe for a lifetime of needless anger and self esteem issues, but it is certainly a novel approach, if nothing else. Although, in my experience, acknowledging shortcomings and understanding them, sans insulting self-talk, has been fruitful - maybe a bit of honesty and self-awareness, coupled with the occasional crack binge, is more productive?
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 28.6 ms ] threadAs an observation (and whether or not it's right), we tend to view the world in terms of people who 'are' great or people who 'suck at' things, if you see what I mean. As such, "I'm so great - why can't I write this parser" becomes a much less helpful notion than "I suck at writing parsers" because the former implies failure whereas the latter implies a much greater scope for improvement.
I admit that it's all a bit hand-wavey, but by and large I find that my positive thoughts tend to be general ("Ain't life grand?", "Man, this world is awesome") whereas the negatives often settle on specifics ("My handwriting is embarrassing!", "I don't comment my code nearly enough") - I think we can all agree that knowing specifically where things are going wrong is far more useful than knowing were they're going right in general.
So the thing is to tell yourself you suck - having in mind, that at least you know you do. Because most people don't.
You might think, "this cruise isn't as fun as I thought it would be." Which can either lead you to think "this sucks" or "maybe if I take this elevator below the passenger decks, hey a ping pong table... why are their Mexicans lined up along the wall... maybe I should go back up." (sorry, I have a better example from when I used to be a bit depressive, but I can't remember it.)
Also, I expect that what works has a lot to do with the personality type you match.
[addendum: It's as the guy who moved to speak to a new person every day for thirty days. I doubt he tells himself he sucks at talking to girls. More likely he recognizes the fear, chooses it is something he wants to do, and speaks. (Boy that can be hard.) Huh, I'm struggling to point out the article title and hooks betray none of the nuance.]
http://www.manageangerdaily.com/mad-blog/the-pitfalls-of-pos...