It might be true that Barney Stinson is a womanizing and absurd fictional character, but he has a point.
How often do you put yourself down? How often to you make yourself feel worthless for this, that and the other reason? A lot, right?
Well, stop it.
There’s something to be said where knowing where your faults lie. It can come in handy in all sorts of situations: from the workplace to the impending zombie apocalypse (“I’m not skilled in jamming an axe into a person’s head.. you do that …and maybe I should loot that HoHo factory instead.. win win”) It’s our tendency to dwell in those faults and shortcomings and can be the problem.
Why do we focus on the negative?
To be honest, I don’t have the answer to that question. The true answer to that probably differs slightly from person to person but I have a feeling it centers around the idea of unrealistic expectations for ourselves and inaccurate views of others. I’m willing to do bet everything I own that there is not a single person in this world that has it all figured out. I think the closest you can get to having it all figured out is realizing that you will never have it all figured out and accepting where you are at any given point in life. But rather than realizing this, we look at others and see something going well for them and instantly we think “this person… they know what they are doing.. their life must be perfect.. why can’t my life be perfect”. And in our endless pursuit of “the perfect life” we get some bumps and bruises (literally and figuratively). But when we try with all our might and we still can’t reach perfection… we blame ourselves.
Let’s be fair. There are instances where you should blame yourself for things…. like if you try to commit fraud and then get pissy because you end up in jail. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about when you feel like you are a waste of space because of whatever reason. I’m talking about when you feel like you don’t matter. I’m talking about when you feel like giving up because you aren’t perfect. I think we focus on these things because we don’t know what else to focus on. Our thought is that if we can’t blame someone else… we have to blame ourselves.
You don’t have to be perfect
The truth is… it’s silly to blame yourself for not being perfect. No one is perfect. The sooner you can accept the fact that you will never become some sort of outlandish example of perfection, the better off you will be.
Are you working towards bettering yourself? If you are, then good. You’re on the right path. If you’re not…. now seems like a great time to start. Because that is all we can do…. work each day to better ourselves both mentally and physically. So you might mess up from time to time. The world is not going to end because you screwed up. I promise you.. it won’t. All you have to do is pick yourself up and keep trying. And if you do that.. you are the closest thing that I can think of to being perfect: willing to acknowledge mistakes, learning from them, and working towards a better life.
Now… back to Barney Stinson
You might be asking yourself at this point: how can I possibly continue to pick myself up after each failure? after each humiliation? after each let down? The answer is because you are awesome… and awesome people don’t let the world stand in their way. So when something happens to you that is less than “perfect”… be awesome and allow yourself to move past it. It might take some time. It might be painful to keep going… but no one said being awesome was easy.
Eggs and Existentialism 
To be honest Cat I am feeling a little inferior to Beaker at the moment because she can fit a whole alien toy up her butthole, and I am still struggling with the corn on the cob which is really for beginners!! I feel like I will never get my spaceship license!! So thank you for cheering me up, and making me feel more positive about it. I ♥ you!! And I’m waiting for my hug!
Whoo hoo! Love Barney. Actually I just love Neil Patrick Harris. But that’s besides the point. I think people concentrate so much on the negative because a lot of people just like being sad! I know crazy. But it takes a whole lot less work just feeling sorry for yourself and moping around the house than it does being happy and going out and doing awesome stuff. Also, did you know you can train your mind to think more negatively or positively? If you close your eyes and are told to recall a random moment, is it happy or sad? If it is a sad moment, that means you have trained your mind to think negatively and will remember depressing times more than happy times. So you have to take the effort to retrain your brain… which is more work. So in essence, yes. When you are feeling sad, stop being sad, and be awesome instead. It takes more effort but feels a whole lot better. Awesome post!! =D
I’m pretty guilty of training my brain to thing negatively… but I’m working on it! Sometimes I feel like my brain goes there because coming out of the darker times in my life is when I learned the most about myself.. but the constantly self hate is no good… I’d rather just be awesome!
I have been in that boat… but I am a lot happier now that I am focusing more on the positive in my life. And self-hate is icky. I still get down on myself but I am a lot more proud of my accomplishments. =D
I feel the same way! It’s always a work in progress 🙂
I agree. it’s hard being so freakin awesome sometimes 🙂
indeed it is!
Thank you for the uplifting post Catniss!! I am definitely on the pursuit to make myself better and be more awesome, and quite literally I do have a lot of bruises from that! I get them all the time from working out, I can count 8 on me right now! It’s as if I collect them or something, or maybe it just makes me bad ass!! Or a klutz, same difference! And sorry Sophie, you are just not quite as awesome as me!! 🙂
I have a lot of bruises too.. and I usually have no clue where they came from! haha
It’s easy to feel that we are our own worst enemy and own worst critic. Why? Not because we are any more judgemental or harsher on ourselves, we just know where to target that criticism. Who else but you knows what your deepest fears and anxieties are? When you criticize yourself you hit directly on that soft spot that almost no one else knows exists, and that hurts no matter how awesome you really are!
When I’m feeling down, or just outright depressed I force myself to get up and do something. Anything. Ever notice how feeling down tends to go directly with sitting at home, alone. Get out of the house. Go for a hike, go to a coffee shop and sit for a while, go be around people even if they annoy the hell out of you. If I force myself to shake loose of the rut I’m in, I find the issues that were holding me in that rut tend to fall away and either be nothing serious or something I can figure out how to handle.
That’s what I’m working on doing. Sometimes it’s hard for me to get out of a “funk” because I don’t have a car and I don’t want to walk anywhere in the rain… but I’m working on finding alternative activities to sitting on the couch pouting while I watch the news 🙂 Thanks for sharing, Dirk!
Sometimes we need to break apart our world in order to put it back together in an even better way! Great post!
I couldn’t agree more! Some of the best decisions I’ve made have come from basically crumbling my world intentionally. It was never easy… but I’m glad I did it!