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Keeping Your Chin Up On The Way Up
There's this great article about dealing with the disappointment of not reaching your goals. To sum it up, if you measure your current progress against where you started, you will feel much better than if you measure how far you have to go.
It seems like Bubbletoe(Richard Butler) is struggling with this issue, so maybe it'll help.
Here's the most relevant part of the article:
| quote: | For some reason, very early in life, people learn one of two ways to do that measurement, and which one they learn makes a huge difference in how happy and satisfying their life is.
Either they 1) measure themselves against the Ideal (in other words, they measure their progress against the Gap, which is always large and never gets any smaller), or 2) they measure themselves against A1 (their starting point, against which progress can continually grow).
Each way of measuring has a completely different emotional and psychological result.
Those who measure themselves against the Ideal end up unhappy, frustrated, and disappointed. They do not get to experience a sense of accomplishment or a sense of achievement. Whatever they do, it feels like a failure, because they are still just as far from the Ideal as when they started.
This creates incredible dissatisfaction and low self esteem. They may achieve a lot, and may contribute to the world a great deal, but emotionally and psychologically it does them no good.
Those who measure themselves against "Actual 1" (their starting point) have a different result. These people look backward to measure their progress. In fact, that is the rule: always measure against where you were, never against the Ideal.
Always measure backward, never forward. Because they measure against where they started, they experience great psychological and emotional reward. Over and over, they experience satisfaction and a sense of progress and optimism. They keep spiraling upward, always making progress -- and enjoying their progress.
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Link to full article
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| quote: | Originally posted by dj_alfi
change your avatar for fucks sake. |
Last edited by Beatflux on Dec-19-2009 at 23:40
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