stop blaming your flaws, they aren't as bad as you think

[lao che]

edit: should this be in general or off topic? if it needs to be moved, so be it. thanks


i was thinking about the moment i realized i wasn't ugly. i'm 40 next month, this happened when i was 26 maybe 27. i was working in a bar and i was a very cocky dude at the time, but insecure cocky rather than confident teasing cocky. this girl came into the bar a few times and i gave her all the usual lines "take a ticket and get in line" "i'm not just a piece of meat, bartenders have feelings too" so she was obviously into me and we ended up going out. i was clueless with women beyond the cockiness but anyway ... we were out having a beer, the bar has mirrors all over, and i caught the reflection of a middle aged woman, and for a second i thought it was me! (i had long hair at the time, which - any guys reading this with long hair, get your hair cut!) so i mentioned it to the girl "ha i thought that woman in the mirror was me!" and she looked at me in astonishment, just looked right into me with her mouth open and kind of shaking her head a little "don't you realize what you look like?" the message between the lines being are you kidding me? you're fucking beautiful. you think that's how you look?
at the end of that date this girl told me something like how perfect the night had been. "you didn't put a step wrong all night" something like that. we hung out and had sex a few times but i reverted to being a "nice guy" when i wasn't behind the bar so it didn't really work out.
anyway, up till that point i'd always believed that i was actually a pretty good guy but the reason i did so terribly was because i was so fugly. my world was turned upside down by that revelation. the sudden realization that i can't blame my looks for my lack of success, so it must be something else, something which maybe i can work on. (it was actually a horrifying thought, that it was my personality that turned girls off, not my looks)

not long after that i met and fell in love with (but did not have sex with!) a girl who is still, to this day, the most beautiful girl i ever did meet. from sweden, half polish half bolivian, she's a semi famous DJ now, and she was so far out of my league (i felt) that i couldn't handle her at all. barcelona, one fateful new-year's eve, a combination of too many drugs, my hopelessness, and this girl's beauty and next-level conversations nearly broke me. (if i met her now, it would be easy)
i can still remember calling my sister for help, in tears, and i even knew what the problem was - i never had any passions or interests, nothing to focus on and get excited about.
i remember going to an internet cafe, back in 2002 or whatever, and searching for how to talk to girls, how to get girls, etc just sad and desperate for some guidance. those early days' searches didn't turn up much. maybe some kind of sleazy hypno NLP stuff. which didn't help at all, but at least i knew now. i knew that i could do something about it.

anyway, i was thinking about this last night and i was thinking about advice i would give my son, or advice i wish my dad had given me (i do this a lot these days), i'm sure it's been said before, and probably more eloquently than i can say it but -

once you realize that your flaws are nowhere near as bad/extreme/serious as you think they are then you'll stop blaming those flaws for your lack of success and you'll be able to take steps to correct that lack of success.
once you stop blaming your flaws for your inability to do something then you'll start to investigate and learn how to do it instead of saying "i can't do that because ...."

realize that nobody sees you as negatively as you see yourself. you look in the mirror and all you see is your faults, other people look at you and think you're beautiful and amazing

 

[Man-O]

Nice anecdote. I do often overthink my flaws though it has been worse.
But at the same time you must think of them to find a solution of correcting them.
For me it comes down to this:
If a flaw pisses me too much off I'll try to forget it for some time as best as I can and think on pleasent strengths instead. After some time I'll turn back to my flaw and correct it as I see fit, however some flaws aren't that easy ridding yourself of.

Sometimes flaws aren't even flaws but because you see it from a specific angle it may be.
I think an important word is patience and get the mind set of being happy when a mistake/challenge arrives. Just like you wouldn't tell your son that the painting he did was good, but that the work he put into the painting was good. The latter will motivate to work hard in general (and being able to work hard even meeting great challenges is one of the pillars to joy and success), while the other won't nessecarily motivate him to create an even better painting.

 

[Raqimus]

realize that nobody sees you as negatively as you see yourself. you look in the mirror and all you see is your faults, other people look at you and think you're beautiful and amazing

This is something that took me a long time to realize as well Lao che. Older women and family always said I was handsome growing up but I never believed a word, I never had any real attention from my peers on my dick and so I thought all these people are wrong I am ugly.

Learning later on that wasn't the case it was the nice guy hiding the banana behaviors that got me nothing and that there were women that wanted me I just never thought it possible so I never looked back at the women looking at me if you get what I mean. Anyways very insightful post and very true words.

 

[lao che]

" there were women that wanted me I just never thought it possible so I never looked back at the women looking at me "

absolutely right on, man. purely because the self-belief wasn't there. looking back with the benefit of hindsight i can recall so many instances of girls showing interest in me, right through school, it's so obvious now. but at the time, that cripplingly insecure kid could never believe that. it would be a giant impossible stretch of my entire outlook. my whole worldview was actually shattered that time i mentioned in the original post. (don't get me wrong, i did sometimes get girls before then, a combination of 'luck' and booze mostly)
but now i'm the complete opposite. before i couldn't believe any girl would want anything to do with me, i mean, why would they? and because i believed i couldn't get girls, then guess what? i never got girls. but now i literally believe every girl wants to fuck me. i mean, why wouldn't they? haha what's changed? nothing except the belief.
this is a longer reply than i wanted to write, but all of that kind of woo woo spiritual stuff isn't too far off the mark. if you build it they will come, if you believe it then it can happen, whether you think you can or think you can't either way you're right. all of those things, like positive affirmations, and "the secret" and whatnot. obviously it's not as simple as "you just gotta beliiieeve, man!"
but really i used to be so negative and friends would tell to stop, to think of positive outcomes and ask why i gotta think of the negatives and i would reply "because that's the truth, that's the way it is" i couldn't fathom that my "truth" could in fact not be true at all. but, yeah,looking back it's easy to see how my negative beliefs would and could influence outcomes.


anyway, thanks for replies! have a nice day

 

[Raqimus]

Dude it's no problem it was a very insightful post you have a good one too man