So, this is a follow on question to my thread about what we suck at, based on the last comment I made. As I commented, this has been my most successful thread so far and it's about what we all suck at. I've noticed that people generally tend to find it easier to identify their weaknesses and failures over their strengths. So, what are your thought on why this may be? Are we all so pessimistic and depressed that we feel we are no good at anything (which in my opinion, everyone is good at something even if it may not seem apparent). I wonder what has made us feel this way? Your thoughts.... Happy days
No I'm not depressed I rather enjoy life overall and everyone has bad days. However we all have something we suck at, and i acknowledge my areas of weakness as human.
Well, I hope I understand your question the way it's supposed to be I think the people that do so are not that much confident in themselves and so they see mostly their weaknesses. Maybe they do notice it more when they fail and not when something works. I personally think my personality is based on my weaknesses so that may be a further reason why.
No, I'm not overly pessimistic or depressed (been there though). I have many more strengths than weaknesses and I make an effort to use my strengths to the benefit of others, wherever possible. It's something I fundamentally believe in doing. I'm aware of weaknesses, but I try not to dwell on them. I dare say I could overcome those weaknesses too, if I really applied myself.
A lot of it could simply be down to our mentality. I'm not a psychologist and don't know the consensus on this, but it seems to me that a lot of people find that negative thoughts or ideas are a lot "stickier" in their minds than positive ones and just take longer to go away. Maybe that could be to do with different people's filing systems and where they allocate different thoughts. Perhaps positive thoughts reflect something someone feels does not need improving and so are discarded relatively quickly, whereas negative thoughts get lumped in a long-term "to-do" list in our minds because, well, they are things which we generally want to be improved. I was also thinking society must have some sort of role in this with notions of competition and progress etc. Especially with ideals which the media peddles (like being stick thin to the point of emaciation = sexy). Also the fact that, relative to mistakes, achievements don't seem to get much air-time. If someone does something good, it's just "oh, uh... good job Jeff" whereas if it's a mistake it's "what were you thinking you imbecile, why didn't you notice this or change that *pedantic rant*". As such I think that leads to a kind of negative marking scheme in our minds in which we subtract from full marks rather than add to zero marks. More later, maybe.
