I made a few old posts which expounded the need to get rid of "ego", which, as I defined it, meant feelings of inferiority or superiority towards others, the drive to be "better" or "right". If you haven't read those posts I'll repeat: you need to. Pride and shame in other's opinions are paralysing. What's your goal in life? To get the girl, the job, and be happy? Or to look good in other's eyes? If you base your life off being "better", you will never achieve what should be wanting in life, and furthermore you will never achieve that goal either. Napoleon got pretty close... but there is just no end to the fight.
So you shouldn't care what others think of you. You may have heard this before... but what does it mean? That you shouldn't care what your boss thinks of you? No. You cannot base your sense of self worth on what others think of you.
We all need to feel like we're worth something. In my old posts, I said you should GET RID of your ego, but now I can see that I might have well have said GET RID of your hunger. It's natural you want to have self-worth, a place in life, a meaning. Better said, you need to get rid of your ego problems. Ego is a problem it's misplaced. When you feel shame for everything you do, you need to change how your ego works.
So what do you place your sense of self-worth in? The problems come, most often, when you place it in something you just can't attain, or in other people's opinion of you. In the former, you fail to achieve and then become lazy because it seems you can't get anything from trying. In the latter, you become a PUA so that all the girls will validate you and you can boast to your guy friends about how much sex you get (heh heh heh). That's not happiness.
Sure, you can feel proud when someone compliments you, and shame in an insult, but only because it helps to indicate how far you have come in your goals in life. Not the same.
So what do you judge yourself by? Think of all the things which give you a feeling of pride and shame. Now, what would make you happy? What would be a USEFUL place to put your pride?
Here's what I have my pride in:
1. My freedom and self-mastery. I like to defy the norm; it's a kind of game I play with people. I feel good when I twist the world a little more to the way I want to be, and know that only I rule myself.
2. My intelligence, knowledge and wisdom. I always work to improve on my understanding of the world, and make better and better frameworks to fit the world into. Every little bit I gain makes me feel a little proud. It's a sort of power.
3. The beauty in the world that I can see. Stories, music, hidden things; each time I unearth such a treasure it feels good.
So you shouldn't care what others think of you. You may have heard this before... but what does it mean? That you shouldn't care what your boss thinks of you? No. You cannot base your sense of self worth on what others think of you.
We all need to feel like we're worth something. In my old posts, I said you should GET RID of your ego, but now I can see that I might have well have said GET RID of your hunger. It's natural you want to have self-worth, a place in life, a meaning. Better said, you need to get rid of your ego problems. Ego is a problem it's misplaced. When you feel shame for everything you do, you need to change how your ego works.
So what do you place your sense of self-worth in? The problems come, most often, when you place it in something you just can't attain, or in other people's opinion of you. In the former, you fail to achieve and then become lazy because it seems you can't get anything from trying. In the latter, you become a PUA so that all the girls will validate you and you can boast to your guy friends about how much sex you get (heh heh heh). That's not happiness.
Sure, you can feel proud when someone compliments you, and shame in an insult, but only because it helps to indicate how far you have come in your goals in life. Not the same.
So what do you judge yourself by? Think of all the things which give you a feeling of pride and shame. Now, what would make you happy? What would be a USEFUL place to put your pride?
Here's what I have my pride in:
1. My freedom and self-mastery. I like to defy the norm; it's a kind of game I play with people. I feel good when I twist the world a little more to the way I want to be, and know that only I rule myself.
2. My intelligence, knowledge and wisdom. I always work to improve on my understanding of the world, and make better and better frameworks to fit the world into. Every little bit I gain makes me feel a little proud. It's a sort of power.
3. The beauty in the world that I can see. Stories, music, hidden things; each time I unearth such a treasure it feels good.