Your flaws do not define who you are

Yes, humans are flawed beings. Everyone has a number of flaws and there is no such thing as perfection, but the great thing about humans is that once we realise that something is wrong, we can fix it! This, in my opinion should be obvious, however numerous people out there 'like' to take their flaws as a part of their 'self' as a defense mechanism. People get depressed by comitting blunders, however that depression can easily be avoided by taking the blunder as if it were inevitable or impossible to change. Once you take something in as a part of yourself, it becomes almost impossible to fight it. Example: you come to believe that you are too incompetent to learn a subject. Chances are that you won't fuarrrking learn it, but this is just a cop-out to avoid suffering from the fear of being unable to perform up to your own expectations. I am also guilty of this, and it has deprived myself of many opportunities and in the end caused me to lose all hope and almost caused me to kill myself. Maybe I am on the dumber side overall, but I only realized that this was going on after years and a lot of self reflection, so I thought that it was worth sharing, maybe someone here is also troubled similarly to how I was. I'm not completely sure if this is deserving of a thread but I feel like it's non-obvious knowledge/general advice so I'll go ahead and post it. Maybe it's nonsense and someone will correct me or point the correct name to the phenomenon that I an refering to (which is welcome), which would perhaps also result in decent discussion.

It's true that "I'm bad at X" type of thoughts often are not a realistic picture of your limitations, and serve as a rationalization. However I am not totally convinced a disciplined and objective self improvement mindset is always a good thing, for the reason that our rational understanding of ourselves and what we should be doing is itself flawed, and often completely wrong. The value in false rationalizations is that they give other aspects of your mind an avenue to exert influence. Maybe someone could conclude "I am bad at drawing" because they don't actually like drawing, but have mistakenly come to believe that they want to achieve fame as an artist. In this way they can deliver a passable excuse to make the correct decision, without needing to discover the flaws in their logic or understanding, which they may not be able to, or may only discover too late. Of course the opposite can happen too, with irrational defenses leading you down bad paths, as you describe. Not sure what the best balance would be.

My flaws totally define me. I regret my life. I am very unfulfilled and frustrated. I'm old and ugly and useless

I guess it's ok to be flawed, but not to stay that way.

>>72765 We are all but flesh and bone

>>72763 I’m glad we’re seeing more of this defiant existential reassertion of human worth and possibility on lainchan. It’s a welcome contrast to the usual self-pitying fatalistic nihilism prevalent on the internet. It took me a long time to get there, but the realization of my internal locus on control and always chasing change has led me though increments to present heights my past self would have though impossible. I know a lot of you lains have the same or greater potential to do great things and live fulfilling lives. Carpe diem!

>>72763 I've been finding it very hard to detach past failures and learned helplessness in moving on and trying out new things. I try to ignore it but only at great discomfort and even sometimes pain. I can only keep at it because there is hope but I am just so tired of it. It's a tough balancing act.

>>72778 Yes, it's a very deep pit to find yourself in, but just knowing that there is a way out of it is the first step to climb back out. Please don't ever lose hope, I know that you can make it.

>>72763 >>72778 >>72782 You are capable of so many great things! No matter how far away you are or where you've been or where you're going, just know we're rooting for you!

>>72763 A persons flaws are the dross that must be purged to reveal the true form of themselves underneath which is flawless, but the less you purge them the more they ingress and embed themselves into you.

>>72793 fuarrrk off. this is clearly bullshit

>>72860 No, fuarrrk YOU. Rise and shine, glitterboy.

>>72860 try being more positive and believe in yourself. You'll have a better life if you do :)

>>72775 everyone has potential. they're convinced otherwise by volatile, viscous, and evil people

My big flaw ruined and defined my life. I don't know why but I always had a pessimist, defeatist, fixed and not growth mentality. Very early in life I saw myself as a loser and gave up on trying to achieve anything. People tried to tell me that my mindset was wrong but I thought I saw the truth and everyone else was just a delusional optimist and trying to make themselves feel better about themselves by believing they achieved success through free will and not by being born in the right conditions. Any minor setback I experienced I instantly saw as a sign I reached my limit and should stop bothering. It's scary how hard it's to change this mindset because it's so intertwined with my personality I can't just isolate and remove it. Any positive thought gets judged by the pessimist in me. I can't trust myself because I can't know if what I'm thinking is right or just the pessimist in me talking again. Self-improvement is hard already but it's even harder when I have to constantly use mental energy to fight the pessimistic thoughts.

>>77290 You are retarded, sorry Anon

>>77292 Look around the place you hang out before calling anyone retarded. OP i suffer from that attitude myself. It's a hell world that wont give you much breathing space or even at all in most of your life. Focusing on the immediate challenge though and solving it will reward you slowly , do something instead of nothing even if it is in vain you feel your muscles move.

After overcoming countless obstacles and finding workarounds to numerous flaws, I refuse to believe that there are constant, definite limits to your abilities. As painstakingly difficult as it may be, you should never abandon your struggle against your own limitations. i'm just a weird schizo on the internet though

>>77295 >I refuse to believe that there are constant, definite limits to your abilities Intelligence is pretty much fixed sadly. You can always educate yourself but you will never be able to innovate and always lag behind and risk get taken advantage of by smarter people. What pisses me off is that time keeps going on and you keep getting older and by the time you finally fix your flaws a lot of damage has been done. Why was I not born wise and reasonable like other people?

>>77292 Or maybe he has a mental illness like depression or something else. Even intelligent people can be mentally ill. We don't know much about anon.

>>72763 >People get depressed by comitting blunders, however that depression can easily be avoided by taking the blunder as if it were inevitable or impossible to change. What are you going to tell to the guy who is stuck in a wheelchair that wants to be in a swimming team or play basketball professionally? This retarded mentality is exactly the problem. There are fixed things that you can't change. Genetics and ever your whole destiny is predetermined. The reason why you are stuck in hell is because all the choices were already made without asking you anything. It's all chaos and you can't do a single thing about it, the best thing to do is to just sit back and relax.