“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt
If you complain that everyone is mean to you and treats you unfairly, then you are going to piss people off and motivate them to be mean to you and treat you unfairly.
If you appreciate everyone and the attention and opportunities they offer you, then you are going to make people happy and motivate them to give you attention and opportunities.
Believe it or not, you have influence over how people treat you, and it all has to do with how you feel about how they treat you.
It may not feel like a choice, but it’s a choice. You can appreciate other people in your life, or you can complain about them. Appreciating them leads to happiness and good interactions. Complaining leads to more isolation, more depression, and more humiliation. You have this choice with every single person you talk to, every day of your life.
Even if a person is a raging asshole and offensive to you, they provide you with opportunities to learn, to grow, to become more resilient, to prove them wrong, to challenge yourself and become something better than they think you are, to develop more confidence, to become less affected by social pressures, to become less affected by superficial insults, to become more resolute in your values and ideals, to develop strong boundaries, to stand your ground and develop more self-respect, to motivate yourself and inspire yourself, to become something stronger, greater and better than you could have been before.
Turn around and thank them for giving you this opportunity. See what happens.
I’m not saying you don’t have real problems in your life. What I’m saying is that we ALL have real problems in our lives. What matters is what we do about them. How we see them and how we react to them. Not whether we have them or not.
It’s all right there in front of you, you just have to choose to see it.
Every criticism should be used as fuel to better yourself and be appreciated as such. Every fault pointed out by others should be taken as friendly advice, even if it wasn’t intended as such. Every slight is a compliment. Every failure an opportunity.
Love conquers fear. So start conquering.
People will treat you the way which you expect to be treated. If you expect people to treat you like a whiny bitch, then they will treat you like a whiny bitch. If you expect to be treated with respect and authority, then they will treat you with respect and authority.
This is not rocket science.
It was you. All along, it was you and within you. Wake up.
Very good post Mark
Damnit Mark. You’re such a douchebag.
Thanks buddy.
No problem. ♥♥
Fantastic article
Thank you
Another very well written article. While men who struggle with their dating life have various causes, I truly believe that this attitude is the common denominator for those who perpetually struggle and essentially stay in the same state for years on end….young, old or otherwise.
“When your attitude is right the facts dont count”
In the Vipassana meditation discourses the teacher talks a lot about seeds and fruit. He points out that the seeds you plant will yield the fruit you get. If you plant orange seeds you’ll get oranges, but if you plant crab apples, then you’ll get those. You can’t wish a bad fruit tree to give you delicious fruit.
And all the fruit trees, good or bad, will produce more and more trees if you give them fertile emotional soil to grow in.
Cosign. Still, the problem is not feeling inferior.
Feeling inferior and superior goes by hand with winning and losing. If you think you did a fantastic job but when the results come you’re last on the chain, you’re to feel inferior. That, if you have any sanity. Or if you came at top, or if you win the match, you’re going to feel confident and dominant. If you have any sanity. Your feelings correlate with reality.
The thing is not what you feel but where does that push you. Like Mark said. What then? what do you do with it?
Ok, your hand is burning on the fire. Now what? do you suppress the pain? take painkillers? block it? ignore it? turn out the music really loud? get distracted? buy ice, to compensate for the third grade burns that are appearing on your skin? make up? do you come up with a justification that makes it OK for you to get burned? as a payout for stuff you have committed? or not? price to pay? or you blame it on someone else, like, the fire is so bad because it burns! or maybe hating your skin because it hurts? or you deny the whole thing? or do you chop out your arm? what does that pain, or that pleasure, make you do?
How about, retiring your hand from the flame. Then learning how to handle the stuff so you dont get burned, that, without hating the fire nor the pirotechnics.
For most people… I think we’re taught this stuff. Most people just reject the undesired feelings, including the inferiority one. Most people build structures to compensate, instead of moving and fixing and changing and taking charge of the situation that is causing the feeling.
So leave the fucking feelings alone. They are there for a reason. Dong fight them.
Go to the source. Change reality.
True story
[...] Mason talks about inferiority feelings. I [...]
I wanted to be persuaded by this, I really did.
However, far too many times in my life I have expected the worst, and yet good things happened.
I have expected to fail, and succeeded. I have went up to a girl, expecting to be rejected, just to do my part, and she opened up giggling and went wonderfully.
I have went to “big shot” guys expected to be shot down, and actually it went well.
And I have expected good things on other occasions, and shit happened.
I much prefer when you said : You don’t control much.
I think this “attitude” is just giving yourself an illusion of control. And honestly, you cannot control other people.
I might be misunderstanding this article. I might change my mind someday, or have a totally different opinion. But as of yet, I have too many reference experiences of fearing, yet finding that good things do happen. And that is, sweet.
That is sweet.
What I’m referring to in the article is a more general worldview, not a case-by-case basis. You’re absolutely right that people can prove us wrong on a case-by-case basis… but in general if you expect everyone to treat you like shit all the time, you’re going to behave in such a way that brings that true.
I do agree with the benefit of this attitude though, at least it gives you a lot more happiness than the opposite
Like Rudyard Kipling said “I always prefer to believe the best of everybody — it saves so much trouble.”
Btw, something that was on my mind as it is Summer time, and everyone is into the “Summer body”, in your article “Shut Up and Join a Gym” or maybe somewhere else, you said that you did not experiment yet with bulking and will see when you build bigger muscles whether that has an effect on your social interactions, and that you’ll write up an article on that.
I hope you’d find time for that article
Short article but very powerful. Good job, Mark.
This was a good piece, but it could be better if you anchored the message in examples. The omission leaves something to be desired.
For example, hundreds of smart, wise, notable people give commencement speeches every year. A lot of them are really good, but what makes Steve Jobs’ Stanford address memorable? What stands out about DFW’s “This is Water”?
They used examples and anecdotes to help the reader connect with the message. They made it real. As the old writing adage goes: show, don’t tell.
Not trying to make every post a Steve Jobs commencement speech.
Brevity was part of the point here.
This was an awesome article. Thank you.
I personally don’t like this article! Or articles of this kind, but maybe it’s just me and I am interpreting the wrong things in this from my current view point, like you Mark described in ‘How to give good advice’.
Because for me this is a feel good article which will probably change nothing, but from which you get the impression that it would help you/me.
Because if you have deep down in your core a bad world view and bad destructive behaviors and this so long that you can’t identify them because they are like an extension of your body which you don’t recognise, than this article becomes just a feel good article.
Because after reading I or you are feeling better and the possible thought is, yeah this is it! From now on I will change this! But in the long term probably nothing changes.
To give an example I devoted a lot of time in the last 5 years in personal development and their was good and impressvie change, but not overall change. because after 5 years I felt still deep down the same, as if nothing changed.
This was to the fact that all the years since my childhood I had the feelings that i am not good and worthy enough and so there was not an easy way to identify this feelings, which impact every single interacting.
So I belive you are totally right with what you wrote here: ‘People will treat you the way which you expect to be treated.’ But with what I have some problems is, that this article suggest, that it is just a choice for everybody to be happy etc.
Cause I belive for some people it may feel like they have a choice with this article, but in reality they have not a choice. Because sometimes our expectations to be treated lay so deep down so hidden in our personalitys that we can’t identify them, because they are like a part of our body over which we can lay new expectations, which might cover them. But they will never cover them full.
Don’t get me wrong I am not saying that change is not possible, but it is a bit more dificult than to read just this article or other articles ( because like on every personal development website you come across this kind of articles) and change, if you are really having some deep problems.
So I would really love to hear your thoughts about this Mark…
Thanks jimie
I think one thing that’s misleading in the self help industry that hurts a lot of people is this idea that you can wipe out who you used to be or 100% change who you were.
Neuro science indicates that you don’t remove old habits or old thought patterns, you merely lay newer ones on top of them. So the kid with the self image issues is always going to have a little bit of a self image issue. That issue is just going to diminish more and more the more new habits and thought patterns he lays on top.
So you’re right, you never change 100%.
The other thing is that I think a lot of people get the idea that you’re supposed to be perfect all the time. It’s normal to feel unworthy at times. It’s normal to feel insecure at times. It’s normal to feel sad, or lonely, or like a failure… these are all normal feelings that are impossible to get rid of. The question is whether you’re going to let them control your life or not.
With that said, what was written in this article is still relevant and still pertains. If you continue to see yourself as not having control over how you interpret your own thoughts and feelings, then you’re never going to get anywhere. As long as you continue to say, “well, I can’t control how I feel, this is just how I am,” then yeah, you’re going to continue to feel that way, and you’re going to continue to be treated the same way you’ve been treated.
And finally, you really have been putting in an honest effort for five years and experienced some results but nothing permanent, then there is a chance that you have some sort of chemical imbalance and could benefit a lot from pharmaceutical solutions. A minority of people fall into this category, and you may be one of them.
Is it all about taking control of your life and your identity so that other people can’t be perceived as a psychological thread to you? It would be really conclusive to discuss concrete examples! For example, if a bossy person (e.g. your flatemate) is subtly trying to belittle or patronize you, that should not bother you. Instead, you can say “cool, whatever” or give him or her the silent treatment. The latter would be most effective in a situation in which this cocky funny person asks you a question to make fun of you or in a completly different context when you feel the need to justify yourself.
But then again, how much should you ignore and when do you need to assert strong boundaries?
You’re mistaking this post as being some sort of behavior you perform. It’s not. It’s a certain mindset to adopt.
Good point … so it does not really matter what you do. What’s more important is how you feel about it?
Mark, correct me if I’m wrong, but the point of the article was not to say that “what you do doesn’t matter” so much as to say that your expectations will sub-consciously guide your actions.
Both feelings and actions matter, and both have a strong influence on the other.
Yup.
Hey Mark,
I’ve been working with a therapist ever since I could afford it (sadly won’t be able to in a month from now) and, amongst other things, am focusing on letting go of the excessive need for validation.
However, with respect to people treating you badly… I am highly sensitive to alienation, and one thing that often happens when I am out with a friend is that whoever we are talking to would not make eye contact with me AT ALL, just with him… and I tell myself that people are just more comfortable talking to people who are the “same”, i.e. have the same accent or are white.
It makes me pretty depressed… I feel like I don’t have a chance to begin with. Upon which numerous examples of socially successful Indian men are pointed out to me… I get a brief fillip then I’m down again.
This is a major, major, major hindrance to making any progress because I shut myself up at home straight after. And when I approach and get blown off after such an incident I turn into a major emotional vampire.
Any ideas?
Cheers.