All of my feed readers and social feeds seem to be jam packed with articles on how to be successful, the top skills you need to have to be happy and the traits you definitely cannot have if you ever want to be happy.
A few weeks ago, I tweeted that it would be funny to gather all of these tips in a master document to see the absurdity that you get with these type of articles.
This morning, one of the articles in my feed outlined 50(!) traits that meant you are born to be an entrepreneur. Probably the most absurd article to date.
Here’s the thing. It’s not that the traits, tips and skills outlined in these articles are wrong per se. Usually what’s listed are all really helpful things for the topic at hand.
What I don’t like is that they promote a negative view of yourself. See, you are going to be reading these articles wanting confirmation. You want it to tell you that, “Yes, I am awesome!”. Since you are human, I guarantee you won’t truthfully check off all the traits. I daresay nobody in the world does.
Yet, with these kinds of articles you subconsciously think that this is what it takes. You subconsciously feel bad about yourself. You subconsciously add a great amount of pressure to yourself.
I shouldn’t care what other people think of me, yet I do, and you probably do to. It’s important to us as humans, and I daresay a good thing in moderation.
The real skill here for being mentally strong is believing in yourself, being happy in who you are. Realize that you are flawed (we all are!) and try to slowly improve these areas. But don’t feel like you can’t do that. And don’t feel like you aren’t good enough as you are already.
