Behind everyone who behaves as if he were superior to others, we can suspect a feeling of inferiority which calls for very special methods of concealment. It is as if a man feared that he was too small and walked on his toes to make himself seem tall.
Alfred Adler. Austrian psychologist
Looking back on my life I realise I was covering up my perceived inadequacies with achievements. In my teenage years I became progressively more determined and relished in proving others wrong. I went from bottom of the class to the top. I went from never being picked for sports teams too being selected for the British Sailing Team. Instead of being a fun activity, sport became a way to top up my self esteem.
One might say; “but this mindset helped you become successful”. Indeed, it’s a common theme in the stories of “successful” people. It’s also helped me develop skills that I now enjoy putting to use.
However, there’s no escaping the fact that the roots of such success are rotten and if one is to avoid blowing over in a future storm they must dedicate some time to healing their roots.
Success born out of inadequacies isn’t true success. In that you are simply reaffirming the inner narrative that you aren’t good enough. No matter how much you get from the outside world you will never heal the hole inside of you.
We wouldn’t lust after the lives of many celebrities we look up to if we knew the self-hatred they carried within. However much someone has can they truly be called a success if they don’t have the most important thing? Namely, self-love. Losers therefore can never really win. And equally you don’t need to have a trophy in your hands to consider yourself a winner.
Furthermore, pursuing “success” this way is stressful. Tension comes when trying to fill the gap between who we are and who we want to be. The further these two are apart the more stress we feel. Because this gap will never be closed by external gain we are putting ourselves under eternal stress. Once our bodies are too fragile to achieve we lose what gave us our self esteem and are forced to make do with clinging onto memories of our past achievements. That is not success in my book.
One of the biggest regrets of dying people is that they missed valuable family movements because they were working. They realise they suffered because they accepted the wrong criteria of success. Namely, competing with others rather than sharing enjoyable moments with others.
THE DANGERS OF HIERACHY THINK
This mindset is a consequence of seeing the world in terms of hierarchies. We’ve accepted without question the rules of the game imposed on us by others. Namely, to be a success you must compete with others for prizes. Whether that be a sports day medal or an attractive mate.
If we look different from others we may be more likely to to believe in the hierarchy as we regularly see it applied by others onto us. Us humans are more susceptible to accepting the opinions of the group than you might assume.
Social psychologist Solomon Asch famously showed that people were willing to ignore reality and give an incorrect answer in order to confirm with the rest of the group. People also have a commitment bias which means we try to double down on our past actions and look for evidence to support us acting that way.
In the same way those who look different from others are more likely to see the hierarchy in action. The extreme example of this is being bullied by others. Fighting back would have physical consequences so we do the alternative. We cower and pray for mercy. Just as one may throw themselves before a king. In this way we have affirmed the hierarchy to ourselves and we tend to find evidence to re-affirm this belief.
At least in the modern world, violent bigotry is minimised by rules. This allows those at the bottom of the hierarchy to rise up the ladder. On the face of it this is a good thing but the idea of the ladder is built out of the fallacy of hierarchy. That we can achieve self esteem by being better than others.
Such thinking has consequences for us and those around us. We judge others worth by their position on the hierarchy as we do ourselves. This makes true friendship difficult. Alfred Adler wrote that all vertical relationships are unhealthy. Under hierarchy think all we have are vertical relationships.
We assume that ‘different’ means better or worse as we are looking at the world through the glasses of hierarchy. Therefore, if others or ourselves look different we can’t accept there could be such a thing as equal but different. Doing so would be embarrassing and would mean we’d have to admit that we’d potentially wasted years of our life flogging a dead horse.
EXERCISE
Here’s a simple test:
- Take 10 seconds and think positive feelings about yourself
- Now ask yourself how much of that 10 seconds involved reminding yourself or your achievements
If you wake up each morning reminding yourself what makes you valuable that is a sign that you don’t think you are enough.
THE NEED TO PROVE YOURSELF
“Don’t try to impress people. Always be yourself!
Bella Thorne
Proving yourself to others can be a fun challenge but many waste years of their life doing this. Not living life on their own terms.
It’s true that no matter how disabled or different you look, if you become very good at a skill others will come to respect you. Or may at least change their flawed opinion that you were less able than you actually were.
But living life this way is a strategy doomed for failure from the outset. There will always be new people who you need to prove yourself to. And those strangers you fear the options of; there will always be more of them who remain to see you as inferior because of your differences. Very few people are so famous that their achievements are known by everyone.
And even if you did manage to make your achievements known worldwide would it be worth it? For all that strength you showed you remained weak in the area that counted most. It is a weak man indeed, that lives for the adoration of those that once looked down upon him.
Realise that you are living a life rooted in the base instincts of humans. The hierarchy view of the world is grounded in evolution which is by definition animalistic. It’s a programme our nature and nurture has taught us to run. That is what children do before they learn to think for ourselves. Some never do.
If we accept that by achieving to prove others wrong we are only appealing to the immature side of others then why live your life to fit in with that? Humans also have a logical side and a loving side. These parts of us that really make us valuable as humans. So, if you have to live life on others terms live it to prove them wrong. But then you realise that those that are loving and those who are philosophical don’t care where you are on the hierarchy.