Indulge me.

[pantryslut]

Been thinking about this topic a lot lately. Maybe I will share the fruits of my thinking with you all soon. In the meantime, though, a poll.


[Poll #914760]

Comments

[amarama.livejournal.com]

Why I feel like an underachiever:

I grew up with incredibly high expectations for achievement placed on me by my parents. The expectation was, do what you do very well, in fact be the best at it, and recreate your world outside a mainstream context all while doing what you do so well that you're the best at it. My immigrant father dragged himself up from poverty, and did it by his own rules, is accountable only to himself, and put that expectation on his kids. My brother has succeeded at it, by my Dad's estimation, I don't think I much have.

How I cope with those feelings:

I feel self-hate. I then try to get over my self-hate. I go in circles. I achieve madly, then I do nothing. My perspective is a lot different than my family's in some ways because I had cancer when I was a teenager. I never expected to live long, so I'm much more of a hedonist than they are. I cope with a lot of my lack-of-achievement shame with hedonism and trying to live a rich daily life, but this also means I have a hard time making long term plans.

What I would need to do to stop feeling like this:

More therapy. Feeling some kind of stability and like my choices have paid off. Feeling valid on my own, without a CV or list of subcultural cred after my name.

[debbieann.livejournal.com]

I think I must have a not as negative view of 'underachiever'. I could do more, but I have a great life and I am happy and content. I have never really been ambitious. maybe some underachievers want to achieve more, and that makes it harder. I could work a lot harder on my writing, but I tend to enjoy whatever is happening at the moment instead. I don't think I am really striving to get somewhere.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Like debbieann, I'm happy and content, feel like my life is going well, can see a bunch of things I will accomplish and that make me happy to think about.

[billbrent.livejournal.com]

I agree with Debbie Ann.

Also, I've learned there's a vast difference between self-confidence and self-esteem. I seldom if ever suffer from a lack of the latter anymore. I really think that's what works for me now. It took me about two years in therapy to figure it out, and now I'm done.

Living well is the best revenge.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Why do I feel like an underachiever ?

Part of it is the usual imposter syndrome mechanism: You are inside Thing X That You Do. You know it really rather well, you see how to do things with it. It seems, on the whole, straightforward to you. Other people with whom you interact, whose own Thing X is something completely different, see this complicated Thing X from the outside, and see all the complexity you've spent however many years getting a grip on all at once, and are impressed because what's well-known and straightforward to you is dauntingly complex to them. Achievements in Thing X start to feel less and less relevant, because it feels like you are winning disproportionate amounts of praise for things that are relatively simple.

Part of it is ex-Catholic guilt syndrome.

Part of it is the bad feedback mechanism that goes "You have this to do. Make a plan. Now, you're not doing well enough unless you're ahead of plan. Oh, you're ahead of plan ? Then the plan's out of date. Update the plan. Now, you're not doing well enough unless you're ahead of plan" recursively.

Part of it is a couple of non-trivial life experiences of putting a great deal of time and effort into making something as good as possible by measure A and then having it judged by criterion B, which nobody actually told me was relevant, and not doing so well by that criterion at all as by the measure I was actually aiming for.

I have acknowledged, in theory at least, that not everything I do has to be perfect; but I'm only half-joking when I add the rider "so long as it's an order of magnitude better than anyone else in the world is doing it."

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Also, in my deepest heart I'm a tremendously lazy sod who just wants to stay in bed and read my book, mess around online, play Civ, watch movies, write and occasionally have friends to visit of concentrated bouts of intense socialising. I have perhaps a disproportionate assessment of what actually counts as giving in to my inner sloth, and a disproportionate wariness of so doing.