A Story I Tell Myself
I have been fascinated with the idea of stories I tell myself and how those stories inform my perception. I am someone who is caught in productivity purgatory. I always feel like what I do is never enough for the goals I want to achieve. There is always something to be done and there is never enough time in the day. I always tell myself that I am behind my peers, which causes the void inside of me to grow larger. This is the story that I have convinced myself I am supposed to be the main character in. I always blame myself for not getting the most out of my day. It is a constant battle between enjoying life and chasing the greater levels. I tell myself this story as a way to trick myself into being a high performer. However, what is masked behind it all is the insecurity of never being great enough. I convince myself that my success is never enough, as a way to put more gas in the tank. It is a very immature way to approach my own emotions and I know it is very unhealthy. However, there is something inside me that likes the way I treat myself, it makes me strive to challenge myself. So in some weird way, the story that I am telling myself is making me a better person. It is making me write articles, go to the gym, work more, bond with random people about the struggles I go through and it gives me fuel to do even more. I believe that the stories we tell ourselves, even if they are unhealthy can be good. As long as it breeds fuel to be constructive instead of harmful.
I am writing this a day before my self-imposed deadline, and interestingly enough I picked up a book called Quotes to Live by The School of Life. I was skimming through the book and found something that really resonated with the situation I am in right now.
“The timid tend to live — paradoxically — in terror of being accused of boasting. So whatever good they have accomplished, they take great care to hide. If something has gone well, they publicly put it down to luck and privately assume that it was far worse is soon to come. But there might be an opportunity, every now and then, to acknowledge what has been a success. One might try, on occasion, to stop putting oneself down and open up about a success one has been involved in. It could feel as dangerous as shoplifting, yet maturity may mean finally daring to take the measure of, and a little pride in, one’s own virtues”
I think this is a wonderful way to sum it all up. While I do not accept all my successes as successes, recently I have been getting better at realizing that I do have some successes. I am slowly stacking the chips of life, instead of spending them.