breadandbuttercreek t1_j1a0yw7 wrote
Metacognition - being prepared to admit you are wrong or in other ways deficient - is an important part of the path to wisdom. It seems easy to know when others are wrong, but it's much more important to see your own mistakes. Don't judge me by my successes, judge me by how I handle my failures. To be able to see yourself as others see you would indeed be a great gift.
EchosEchosEchosEchos t1_j1b39dt wrote
The worst part about this though, it's like being in a state of superposition that gets weird.
If you're the type of person who fully admits fault and feels guilt, and apologies when they do so, things can start to get wonky in your head if it's not in a cut and dry situation, and fault either... isn't easily determined, up in the air, unresolveable...or worst of all, with/regularly around someone that knows this about you, and tends to weaponises it without you even realizing it...and if you do, that makes you question if every error you make, even if you absolutely know you made it, was really an error you made.
And that's not even getting into the knowing your faults Vs. Imposter Syndrome Vs. Low Self Esteem "which one is it" thats omnipresent when they all are easily applied, and equally self evident indicators of "yep, it's that one".
In all honesty, the never-admit-your-wrong-or-say-sorry personalitiny seems like it would be a less stressful mental space to go through life with. You're just never wrong, less mental energy spent analyzing situations.
crawfishmcslab t1_j1blcbi wrote
I'm doing the 12 Steps which are, amidst other things, about accountability for your part in actions that have damaged you and/or others. For someone who has experienced a lot of debilitating guilt in the past this is quite a tall order. However, through sobriety and meditation, I'm finding that I'm able to view my incidents, actions or behaviours through a relatively dispassionate perspective, allowing for a quite objective process. It doesn't aim to lay blame or apply guilt, but instead looks to understand the machinations involved to result in the fallout you're investigating. I think this is a real space for growth.
breadandbuttercreek t1_j1b7fav wrote
There are definitely different ways of looking at life, but generally flexibility and adaptability will serve you better than stubbornness and selfishness. If people try to take advantage of you, you need to find ways to protect yourself. Sometimes easier said than done.
WolverineSanders t1_j1b98tv wrote
I wish everyone was flexible adaptable, but I see no evidence to suggest that people aren't more rewarded in our society for being stubborn and selfish
IAmNotAPerson6 t1_j1bzqz8 wrote
This is just way too contextual to be descibable summarily and as generally as said here.
EchosEchosEchosEchos t1_j1b828o wrote
For sure. Just mentioning a potential pitfall, or maybe it's just a single past relationship of mine I'm applying as a universal potential pitfall. Dunno.
IAmNotAPerson6 t1_j1c1br1 wrote
1000% this. It's important to acknowledge how much other people don't know things or wing it or are faking it and whatnot, to help mitigate the impostor syndrome and low self-esteem, though those are not always sufficient, admittedly (I'm exhibit A lmao). It really does seem to be about doing your best to accept that everything is tentative and best guesses, based on convention and rarely are things hard and fast, etc.
The abuse of being willing to admit faults is a whole other ball game. But at least for the personal individual matters, even being willing to admit fault and apologize shows that one generally knows when an error was made, and that knowing can then potentially be used to alleviate impostor syndrome and low self-esteem, because it can be used to make one's self better. That's way easier said than done, and someone might just as easily feel worse when admitting an error (hi, it's me again), but it doesn't have to be that way.
This is a really cloudy area to talk about as it's super abstract, but I do wanna try to outline a certain path that helped me a little. Political stuff I've read has always involved a lot of self-criticism, but the last couple years I've read a lot that has involved taking in way more perspectives and academic research than usual. It's helped me see that how things are framed matters immensely and that usually most perspectives have something to contribute. This has helped me become totally fine seeing when something a political opponent says is correct, or when someone points out something bad about me or something. I'll freely admit that, but just incorporate it into the frame and/or reshape the frame of the conversation or interaction based on whether or not it's relevant, how it is, how it does or does not change anything, etc. And I'll freely admit when I don't know something and don't know how it affects the framework of something. Because everything's tentative. I realize this may all sound meaningless because I'm not giving a lot of detail, it's just super hard to talk about without going insanely in-depth if someone hasn't gone through a similar intellectual path (I realize how unbelievably pretentious that phrasing is, I just can't think of any other way to put it lmao). But basically, reading and learning lots of self-criticism of my own and similar political tendencies, learning a bit about the vast amount of research on subjects involved in political stuff that's emphasized in those tendencies, seeing how nuanced and controversial and surprising and ingenious and whatnot that that research can be, seeing how various perspectives color one's interpretation of the world and the ways they do and don't contribute things that are true, all helped me be more okay with the tentativeness of my own understanding of things and how it can change, especially when encountering new or different understandings.
Again, that's not all necessarily sufficient for alleviating low self-esteem, but it could possibly help.
ChaoticJargon t1_j1d89y6 wrote
I appreciate this post, though what I'd like to say is that low-self esteem is a multi-faceted problem that starts with our core beliefs about ourselves and includes both conscious and unconscious biases.
But I will just mention here how I overcame my own self-esteem issues - I addressed two problems within my core beliefs about self-worth. The first belief I addressed was how self-worth related to my failures - to solve this I tied my failures to self-growth and the idea of being a better person, in other words, recognizing my failures would inevitably help me grow as a person since I could resolve those failures and learn from them.
The second thing I did was develop my concept of self-compassion. Many people have negative self-talk which tends to cause a low-self esteem, so I changed my self-talk to be more encouraging and I also recognized that there's an emotional investment tied to self-talk, and that emotional investment can be helpful or harmful depending on the words I use, so I use encouraging words instead of detrimental ones.
Finally, I realized the inherent humanness of having flaws, the unique perspectives they bring, and the fact that perfection is impossible, these thoughts allowed me to see everyone as equal and unique. Everyone is growing at their own unique pace and everyone only needs encouragement to be better or do better, since seeking approval is fairly normal for people to do.
Though that is what helped me, I could elaborate more if need be, but there is no end to how we can improve our beliefs. I've written quite a lot about it on my profile if you're interested in learning more.
fugazikolo t1_j1dbp8c wrote
Lovely comment! Thx for posting. Related to it alot. Been going thru similar things in recent years
iiioiia t1_j1j6mop wrote
> That's way easier said than done
So have been many capabilities humans now wield/enjoy (consider how long it took to get from London to New York before flight was figured out), until someone actually decided to figure out how to do it.
Apologies for the optimism. 🙏
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j1bt9ih wrote
You make this sound like a big deal, but it's as simple as "you're not always going to be right and you're not always going to be wrong".
> The never-admit-your-wrong-or-say-sorry personalitiny
Ie, egomaniacal. There's probably some fancier term for it in the latest DSM.
IAmNotAPerson6 t1_j1bynp3 wrote
Yeah, narcissism lol. But that first part's only really as simple as that if you don't really philosophize any further than that.
turingmachine29 t1_j1bcjij wrote
less stressful? no doubt about it. but the collateral damage you will probably cause to the people around you would be incalculable.
VoxR4710 t1_j1b7wo4 wrote
I was thinking about very related topic earlier - how all the best people in life seem to go through depression while the crappy people who deserve to feel depressed never do.
All part of the beauty of life I suppose.. always harder to create than to destroy, to grow than to decay, etc. What makes good things so special.
Fuckr3ddit32 t1_j1ax681 wrote
You have no idea how many people will never admit to any wrong doings. Put it this way every karma earned off this one comment of yours is the most likely amount of ppl on reddit who can even admit to being wrong
fjaoaoaoao t1_j1cd05v wrote
Just to point out something…
Metacognition doesn’t necessarily lead to awareness or admittance of deficit or wrongness as that requires some judgment compared to some standard.
Also, metacognition can be cognitively taxing and inefficient in some tasks.
breadandbuttercreek t1_j1ce4jx wrote
Yeah, that's probably one of the things I'm wrong about.
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