For me this has 100% been the main source of unhappiness in my life. I wish nobody had ever told me how smart I was as a child. The reality was that I was above average but in an unremarkable collection of kids mostly. I’ve done fine in life academically and career wise but I’ll never live up to the expectations that were planted in my head.

Thankfully you can get over this/yourself and let go of ego, ambition, achievement and all that unnecessary crap.

▲

apsurd 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What's interesting to me is how all of it is true. You were and are in an elite tier, the measure is purely how we care to slice it.

Reminds me of the aphorism "whether you think you can or can't, you're right." I find this saying really insightful and true. Others may find it flippant and void of any meaning.

The sports analogy of what you shared is: "there are levels to this". At any given level-child, minor, high-school, college, division of college, semi-pro, overseas, pro, olympian, elite-pro, champion- it seems legitimate that the praise is bound to the context.

And getting to the next level requires more growth and effort to think it's even possible. Maybe you won't, but whether you think you can or can't...

Just some thoughts.

▲

bitexploder 4 hours ago | parent [-]

This gets to the heart of why visualization works. When you’re conscious mind visualizes outcomes, around say work or sport performance or really anything, your subconscious mind can’t differentiate it from reality; the better you are at visualizing the harder it is for your subconscious mind to tell this. It is why visualization is such a powerful performance technique. Negative self talk is really bad for you.

	▲	ryandv 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is more or less the basis of a lot of western esotericism and ceremonial magick. Consider it a weaponization of the placebo effect, or the closest thing to creatio ex nihilo one can personally experience. Dialogue with the purveyor of negative self-talk is another modality in this space.

▲

mattgreenrocks 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There is a HealthygamerGG video where he talks about gifted kids as special needs kids bc of this factor. I found it really enlightening. I definitely had to confront it in my own life.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QUjYy4Ksy1E

▲

immibis 9 hours ago | parent [-]

There is also one where he talks about how about half of his suicidal patients are not delusional and don't have some mood disorder, but are correctly recognising that their lives objectively aren't worth living.

(Which is something he tries to fix.)

	▲	brabel an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		How can they give a life some worth to begin with?? That’s messed up.
	▲	2muchcoffeeman 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		How?

▲

machomaster 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If people would not tell you how smart you are, you would blame your unhappiness on low esteem and on the lack of support in your childhood.

Which one would you prefer?

It's all postfactum explanation attempts, that create links that usually are not there.

Another, internally happier, positive and more cheerful person would be the exact opposite - would always find ways to spin things around for the positive.

It's all about the perspective.

▲

lukan 7 hours ago | parent [-]

"If people would not tell you how smart you are, you would blame your unhappiness on low esteem and on the lack of support in your childhood."

It depends how it was told. Being told "you are smart" vs. "you are the smartest kid" makes a big difference.

▲

machomaster 5 hours ago | parent [-]

As is not saying anything about your smartness vs. being actively told that you are dumb.

Radical examples should be compared with each other, as should more balanced ones.

In both cases I would prefer to be told about being smart.

In a vacuum, self-confidence in kids is more useful than lack of it.

	▲	jebarker 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think you’re right that I’m a negatively biased person, so the praise may have been received differently if I was a more positive person. However, the outcome of the praise was that I was never self-confident and had/have low self-esteem. I think what I received was closer to “you’re the smartest kid” and that set me up believing I was destined to be the _most_ successful adult even if I never felt capable of achieving that.

▲

johndhi 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Lot of interesting views in this thread.

One thing I loved from Osho (spiritual guru) is the notion that everyone thinks they are "extraordinary" but actually the happiest person is the person who is ordinary. Being ordinary and just eating breakfast and sleeping and doing a job is - in fact - extraordinarily rare.

▲

mancerayder 6 hours ago | parent [-]

The same Osho who ran an expensive cult in the 70s and 80s?

Putting that aside, it's hard for me to associate simple with happiness. That's the opposite of motivation, from my unenlightened perspective. It's hardly a rational or smart choice since not being challenged also makes one a bit narrower when it comes to seeking out new experiences. But even if you take the intellect out of it, it 'feels' wrong. And some things are challenging to achieve and bring fulfillment.

	▲	apsurd a few seconds ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I used to really have a problem understanding why people hold peace as some ideal. It's not that i want violence, it's that if i expand on the idea of peace, I always end at "nothing". Like the idea of heaven, it's pure peace, it's… the lack of all these challenges and struggles and pains on so on. it's nothing! How does that even make sense to strive for a staff of nothingness?! This bothered me for so long until at some point, I just grew up. Peace is not nothing in the sense of null. It's nothing more in the sense of empty. I got this from some buddhist writing: emptiness is not the same as nothingness. We are vessels and such. I found this tremendously helpful. Peace is like… space for being.
	▲	PaulDavisThe1st 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If you haven't done so already, you should probably read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. If you have read it already, you should probably read it again.

▲

pfannkuchen 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Isn’t there a danger though of running into differences between oneself and others and concluding that the cause is oneself being “weird” and not the inherent difficulty of bridging the intelligence gap and correspondingly different ways of thinking? Like I could see a very bright kid ending up with low self esteem due to being different if they aren’t told that the differences may be due to their intelligence. Like someone with average intelligence may have difficulty understanding and modeling someone with two or more standard deviations above average intelligence, and all social groups are definitionally numerically weighted towards the mean and away from the edges so absent some filtering the very bright kids will be unusual.

▲

chermi 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you mean that there may be some harm in "hiding" from children their intelligence? I can see that maybe at early ages, but certainly they'll eventually catch on with grades and such? I don't know when different parts of personality manifest, maybe some child psychologist can chime in. But my hunch is that maybe not saying anything until grade 2-3 could potentially help. Above all, I think the key is to tell them that it's trying hard that leads to getting what you want. Obviously that's a bit of a lie, but I think acceptable until a later age.

	▲	jebarker 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Above all, I think the key is to tell them that it's trying hard that leads to getting what you want Totally agree. This is now the approach I’m taking with my 4 year old who is clearly quite bright.