Comment by The Shiznit on July 13, 2011 at 5:35pm

Negative self-portraits can be quite damaging. They relate to what is known as a "self-fulfilling prophecy"; and it's something that I've been discussing with my counselor quite a lot lately.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy

I am also somewhat pessimistic & cynical. For many years now whenever I would describe myself to people I would say things like, "I am... a cold-hearted bastard;" or "I am an opinionated asshole and you probably won't like me," etc.  Oddly enough, my participation here on I-Power has helped me lately to see that I constantly have choices to make concerning what I will say, and how I will behave, and that I don't have to be mean-spirited & nasty unless I want to be.  hehe  Which ended up leading me to this big question about what it was & when I decided to start defining myself the way that I did.  In other words - What made me choose to become cynical, mean, and nasty?  And also now, realizing that I don't have to continue defining myself that way, and that I don't have to be that way unless I choose to be... what do I want to be like from now on instead?  :-D

 

"If you don't like the view from where you are standing, stand somewhere else."

-- Author Unknown

Comment by Māris on July 13, 2011 at 9:34pm

Personally I find pessimism and self-criticism to be the same when it comes to creative work, but is self-criticism bad? The best results are most often achieved by those who give themselves incredibly hard time by never giving slack, plus there is a thing called objective critique, and if you have what it takes to write a book then you have what it takes to be objective in your criticism, hence what you're writting actually may not be that good and you recognize that (the thing that you can't be truly objective assesing yourself leads to branding the process as pessimism). But this probably can't be generalized, so maybe the same is not for you. It's just that I believe that one can either write a lot very freely and loosely with probable loss in quality, or a limited and controlled amount with more worth-per-words, but not both.

This topic actually made me to think if there is a group (workshop) here for those who write, other people can give a valuable perspective on others' work, and save a lot of self-loathing if they can do that for you, so that's a good idea.

However, pessimism for the lose!1 (I guess I digressed a bit)

Comment by Beanow on July 14, 2011 at 11:40am

@ Maris I disagree with this part: "The best results are most often achieved by those who give themselves incredibly hard time by never giving slack" because that assumes that reaching a goal is the highest good. But what about being happy in between? Or even more so, what about being happy even if you fail to reach that goal or gave up?

My video was exactly about this:

Comment by Muhammed Gouda on July 16, 2011 at 2:06am

I Don't know what to say but 2 points help anyone accomplish anything is a deadline and something that blows your mind away like I've always wanted to play an instrument first it was flute then violin then cello but never did an effort to buy an instrument but last year I saw a Video of Yngwie J. Malmsteen playing his song Far Beyond The Sun with japan's philharmonic as I heard what I heard being played I got completely blown away eventually a month later I bought myself a Classical Guitar and I started playing ever since, later by a few month I got a cheap barely playable Electric Guitar soon I'll be getting myself an amp and a multi-effects pedal then a decent guitar.
Now I'm planning to better myself till in 3 years time from now I'd be a kick ass guitar player .

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