Every situation has a silver lining – discover a mindset that heals and enlightens.
October 27, 2021 · 9 min read
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try. ~ Beverly Sills
“What should I do in life when I suck at everything?”
“Why do I ruin everything I do or touch?”
“Why am I so bad at life?”
Have any of these thoughts gone through your mind lately? A lot of people struggle with finding themselves in life.
You keep telling yourself you’re worthless and that you have no interests in life. Even if you do, you still believe you suck at them.
There are a lot of things you can do to change your thinking. In fact, it’s not that hard to fix it.
Let me show you reasons why you think like that and how to fix this problem.
Here you may find some common attributes that may signal you truly believe that you suck at life:
Don’t get me wrong – these attributes don’t tell that you suck at everything. They only reflect your thoughts and assure that you’re in the right place to start making changes.
I have to admit, it’s pretty common for people to criticize others. That’s why relying on someone to give you bliss of hope to move forward in life is not the best way to approach the problem.
The way you should solve it is to start believing in yourself. Sounds cliché and perhaps even dumb, but that’s how life goes.
Behaving like that only strengthens your doubts and you get stuck in this negative mindset. Words and beliefs are incredibly strong power. Your thoughts reflect your personality and accomplishments.
That’s why it’s important to notice only the best traits within yourself and leverage them to your advantage. Use them as your source of strength. Forget your weaknesses.
Such way of thinking only stresses you out and makes you live in a negative web of thoughts. Fear of the unknown and missing out is a driving factor for such mind.
If you’d take everything in a perspective, you could easily recognize that you are abundant of life pleasures. It’s only that you’re taking everything for granted. The sooner you will understand, the faster you’ll do yourself a favor to live happier.
If you’ve been pretty good or decent with your tasks and suddenly became terrible at everything, it’s a sign of overburn.
Too much of stress, anxiety, workload, caring about others, and neglecting yourself lead to such outcome. There are only two scenarios in this situation: either you’re frustrated, irritated, or you’re feeling hopeless.
Most things disappoint till you look deeper. ~ Graham Greene
Negative emotions lead to negative outputs. You feel emotionally drained, you don’t seem to have physical energy, you can’t focus anymore.
You have to find the root cause of overburn. You need to eliminate the patterns that made you reach this point of breakdown.
Burnout can’t be simply brushed off in one weekend of full rest. You may need to take a couple of weeks to rewire your mind to positive thoughts and feelings.
You could also just reduce the workload and take things easier. That will passively make you regain your true self to live your usual happy life.
Start slow and build momentum. The more you rush, the more you tumble. While you may notice others doing a lot of things at a time, this doesn’t happen overnight.
They took things slow and snowballed them into this gigantic burst of never-ending achievements.
Big things start small.
All of us are in different points of our lives. Some are just starting, some got the hang of the snowball, some are failing and starting over.
Your goal is to build a small snowball. If you start slow, steady, you will have a very good foundation that will help you reach your goals. Take your time and don’t compare yourself with others. By doing so, you will enormously increase your chances of success. Believe in yourself.
Just because you suck at everything doesn’t mean you’ve tried everything. Perhaps you’ve tried one or another thing. Perhaps you’ve tried even 10 or a bit more activities. But have you tried 50? 100? 200?
Finding what you’re good at is extremely important for your personal development. It can open you gates to new perspective of life. It can increase your confidence. You will start believing that you are actually good at something.
Disappointment is really just a term for our refusal to look on the bright side. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich
Perseverance is the key. While some people might find their life passions quickly, you might need more time to find that out.
Keep in mind that finding your life passion is not a race. Experiment things. Don’t be afraid to fail. The more you fail, the more likely you won’t suffer from missing out.
The more you require from yourself, the more you strain your mind and cause negative thoughts.
Our biggest enemies are ourselves.
We want to achieve everything as quickly as possible. We see everyday on social feed or news how much have people achieved. Deep down you may envy them. You want to be just like them.
Again, remember our snowball principle. Everyone starts slow and from the basics. Yes, it’s not the most exciting thing to learn alphabet. Every child wants to read and write perfectly so they could reap the fruits of ‘hard work’.
That’s the whole point. You need to take things slow and be easier on yourself. Life is not a sprint. Don’t strain your mind and don’t forget to flow with your own comfortable pace.
Have you ever heard stories of parents trying to grow their children into lawyers, doctors, engineers?..
Have you noticed that majority of people live mundane lifestyles and only sleep, work, rest for a couple hours, and repeat?
That’s what societal expectations do to us. They shape our lives, mentality, and make us to get further away from our true selves.
Picture this: a child has been interested for his whole life into music and singing. However, his parents continuously try to persuade him to become a doctor. “That’s the only way to become rich, be respected, and life a fulfilling live”, parents said.
Do not dwell on your loss. Look forward with bright new hopes. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita
This child eventually believes his parents and tries his best to score good grades in biology. However, it just doesn’t click. The grades are not there, there is no interest, everything seems too forced. Now he’s afraid to fail himself, his parents, his expectations, everything.
I hope you understand where I was going. While defining parents as society might not be the most accurate expression, but they also have a big toll in shaping our lives.
Furthermore, the expectations from society, such as finding a stable job in a corporation, having a family, pet, car, etc., affect our lives directly. We make choices based on the ‘societal requirements’.
The truth is, there is no “correct way of living”. You can always find ways to make money, be respected, and everything else that you desire.
If you follow your passion and happiness, you will find ways in our modern society to thrive fully. There is abundance of opportunities for everything you want to achieve. All you have to do is believe yourself and don’t stop improving yourself.
Some environments are not the best for our self-esteem and confidence. If you put a natural artist in a math class, probably he won’t be showing an outstanding academical performance.
Another thing is that some environments are toxic and very negative. They seep emotional energy and we feel just empty. A lot of people are dreadful going to their jobs. They are not motivated and just try to push through their daily routine.
Such environments make people have negative thoughts and they start believing that they suck at everything. These environments dampen our souls with negativity and it takes time to dry them out.
How do I know that? I’ve been there. I’ve felt miserable at my corporate job. I had no intentions and too little motivation to improve my work skills. I thought of myself as incompetent person (although I put a lot of work there). I’ve had an imposter syndrome.
Therefore, make sure you are happy what surrounds you. It influences your mind and your outlook to the world. The longer you neglect it, the more you will believe in your negative thoughts.
Life is complicated, isn’t it?
That’s what a bad state of mind would assume. You can’t free yourself from worries, everything seems too overwhelming.
Remember the math classes? Don’t worry, even if you didn’t excel in this class, you will understand!
We used to simplify the equations. At first, they were looking very intimidating. If you could only simplify them, you could solve them if you had basics under your feet.
Disappointment is just the action of your brain readjusting itself to reality after discovering things are not the way you thought they were. ~ Brad Warner
Similar situations happen in life. Whenever life looks too complicated, you have to break situations down. You definitely have the basics of life to manage that.
Some of these situations and worries have to be written off and ignored, some of them truly have to be made easier to tackle with.
You don’t suck at everything. You only need to make a structured plan to solve your problems.
If you suck at managing your money, find out where the most money goes. If you spend the majority of money on clothes, cut down on that. If you spend the most money on the rent, look for less expensive place to live in.
Nevertheless, that’s just a temporary solution. The best way to think is not to cut expenses, but to increase your earnings. Poverty mindset will always follow you if you’ll look for temporary fixes.
Impatience, wishes to achieve everything right here and right now stop you from fulfilling your tasks and dreams.
While you might not be too persevered about goals, that doesn’t mean you suck at life. It only means you need to stick to your plan for longer and patiently wait.
Other people fight for their dreams too. A lot of people blindly judge only the final product – the achievement. They don’t take into account all the hard work to achieve success.
“Oh, he got lucky. He was at the right time in the right place”, “I don’t have rich family that would support me both financially and emotionally”
Look, the reality is very distorted due to the social media. People seem to swim in money, travel a lot, have the most beautiful relationships… The truth is completely different. The camera doesn’t reflect behind the scenes. Don’t get fooled by this trick.
A lot of people create their wealth and happiness out of nothing. Their biggest motivation is the scarcity that they experienced in their early age. They started slow and never looked back.
Once you catch momentum, you will continue working for your goals and it will become a habit. Stick to that regime and you will understand the power of perseverance.
Check if you’ve experienced anything similar to this:
If you think one day you will get it all done, and then you can relax, you are bound to be disappointed. ~ Christina Winsey-Rudd
All of these senses tend to build up on each other. You know what happens eventually? Eruption of a volcano. You end up in a spiral of negative thinking that sucks life out of you.
You put yourself under excessive stress and you can’t manage it all comfortably. You need to get to the basics and slow down.
Perhaps you haven’t found your happiness source yet, but have you given yourself a permission to be happy?
Happiness is a choice. It’s not something that you achieve with your goals or accomplishments. It’s a deathbed regret for not becoming happy earlier.
Be grateful for whatever you have. Become more aware and mindful of smells, views, nature, and everything else. You can even meditate which can greatly help you reduce and even eliminate your negative emotions.
If you are happy doing something, you will gradually build up your skills and become good at something. Happiness source can be as simple as mowing a lawn, drinking a warm cup of tea, or anything else. Don’t overcomplicate what’s not necessary.
Overthinking is a sign of overachievers. While that’s generally a good sign, but it can be also detrimental for your mental health.
Overthinking has a certain positive limit. Crossing beyond that you enter the negative area.
Overthinking can help you solve your problems by becoming more prepared for them. You will be able to cope with negative outcomes if they will occur. You might even foresee what can go wrong and fix that.
The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality. ~ Conan O’Brien
However, if you overthink life in general and start worrying about the past or future, you will end up in a loop of negativity.
Worrying about things that you can’t control is waste of time and energy.
If you’re worrying, change your tactics. Be solution-oriented instead of a mindless lurker what could happen wrong. Here’s an example.
Overthinking: What if I get up late? What If I miss the bus to work on first day? What will everybody think of me? I hope this doesn’t happen to me.
Solution-oriented: knowing myself, I tend to oversleep. I’ll make sure to set my sound to maximum and make multiple alarms. I’ll wake up earlier not to miss the bus and get ready on time.
Put your overthinking to work. Take personal responsibility into your own hands and become your own goldsmith of your life.
Okay, let’s be real. You actually might suck at something. You might be not good at maths or you might be a bad driver. You don’t know how to cook and your food tastes bland. You don’t know how to maintain your house properly and it’s very overwhelming. “Insert anything else that you suck at”.
Okay, we got that out of the way. If you really tried, you might’ve found a lot of things that you suck at. Perhaps you’ve managed to pull out 10, 20, or even more things that you aren’t good at. That doesn’t look appealing, right?
Now think how much effort you have put into these things to be more proficient at them. If each of them don’t reach at least 100 of mindful hours that you spend really focused to be good at them, you can’t tell yourself that you suck at them.
100 hours is a general thumb of rule, but some things may require less, some things may require more time. For example, trying to learn playing a guitar in 100 hours is nearly impossible, while spending 100 hours being more proficient at cooking and making your food taste better is quite enough.
If you’ve spent 100 hours making only sandwiches, that doesn’t mean that you spent 100 mindful hours of trying to become a better cook. You really need to focus on increasing your skill instead of doing a mindless activity over and over again.
For example, you will never be able to chop an onion finely in 20 seconds ever in your life if you will never focus on increasing your proficiency in this task. You really have to put your mind into what you’re doing.
If you put in little effort and expect big returns, you will be deeply disappointed. You don’t get apples by planting lemon seeds. ~ Catherine Pulsifer
Notice that 100 hours won’t make you master in a skill. It can only guide you to understand whether you like to do that activity or not. The time needed to master an ability varies drastically depending on the nature of the skill. Some may take 1000 hours, while other can take up to 10000 hours.
It’s impossible to suck at everything. If you put the effort, you will at least be moderately good at something.
First, you need to reset your mind. You have to relax yourself and release all the stress that has been following you until now. It’s similar to cleaning your computer’s desktop from unnecessary programs.
I’m sure you can find ways how to enjoy your time with yourself and embrace some important changes:
Once you press the “reset button” in your mind, you will be ready for changes.
The most important thing to understand is that negative thoughts empower negative outcomes. The sooner you stop playing victim with yourself, the faster you will embrace changes.
Your mind is like a magnet. You can pull negative and positive thoughts. You can pull negative and positive energy. You can make your life miserable or you can live your dream life.
You have the power to choose. The power of mind is undoubtable. You have to leverage what you’ve got and embrace a new way of thinking.
Your idea that you suck at everything comes from your thinking. It’s a mental battle between you and you. Yes, you’re fighting against yourself.
You have everything you need to become proficient at something. You have to start from thinking differently than you do now.
The faster you adopt positive thinking, the better.
As we’ve previously discussed, people do put the work into their goals. The ones that state differently are either liars or natural geniuses that are in the top 0.001 percent.
You might need to change your personal habits to change your perspective to tasks you want to complete. Your habits might be rusty and need some polishing to proceed further.
Disappointment is inevitable. But to become discouraged, there’s a choice I make. ~ Charles Stanley
Make sure you fulfill these points when executing a task or a new goal:
Only practicing can make you proficient at a skill. You never know if you suck at it if you’ve never properly tried.
It’s hard not to be bad something if you aren’t happy with what you’re doing.
Happiness comes from the process and not from achieving a goal. If you’ve got your values about happiness differently, you must reset them properly. Here’s a video which properly illustrates how goals have to be looked at:
Happiness depends only 10 percent on the environment and 90 percent on your mindset. You become easily vulnerable when your happiness depends on other people. You have to change this perspective and happiness has to come from within.
Here’s the secret weapon to your questions – limitless mind.
The ideology of this mindset is based on never ending and continuous improvement. The only obstacle between you and your success is your mind.
The best way to deal with disappointment is to acknowledge and work through the feelings it induces. ~ Noaman Kaysingwala
Adopting limitless mind means not to be afraid of challenges, accepting constructive criticism and feedback. The desire for personal growth outweighs the inconvenience of facing a few discomfortable situations.
If you feel like that none of these suggestions resonate with you or help you, consider looking for help. Having a personal one-on-one talk with a therapist can scatter your doubts and make you more mentally clear.
Therapists have accumulated valuable professional experience over the years. They can help you to overcome your mental obstacles much faster than on your own, especially if your issue is very particular.
It’s impossible to suck at everything. If you keep telling that to yourself, you are only feeding your mind with negative thoughts that stimulate the anger and hopelessness about yourself.
All you have to do is to approach your situation from a different point of view. Start very slowly and with consistence.
If you put the effort, it’s inevitable for you to become proficient at a skill. Perhaps you won’t be a mastermind like Albert Einstein, but you can definitely be above average level.
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