You Think You're Not That Ambitious. Are You Dead Wrong About That?

The surest sign that you’re incredibly ambitious is a complete and total lack of ambition on all fronts.

Being an overachieving perfectionist becomes worse and worse over the years, in other words, because it turns every source of joy into a source of self-hatred and failure. Aiming for perfect, aiming to be the best, sorting through data to see who’s better, setting impossible goals for yourself: These are poisonous habits that destroy your relationship to your own body, block you from the small pleasures of your day, and leach the natural optimism from your cells.

Every time you check in with yourself, you help yourself. Every time you ignore an old, warped story about what your sensations and feelings mean, you improve your connection to your body. It sounds obvious, of course! But it’s exactly what the perfectionist overachiever — even the one hiding inside that aging stoner on the couch playing Assassin’s Creed for the third hour in a row — doesn’t remember to do. PERFECTIONISTS IGNORE THEIR BODIES, EMOTIONS, AND SENSATIONS. SECRETLY AMBITIOUS SLACKERS IGNORE THEIR TRUEST DESIRES AND PASSIONS.

#therapy #advice #mentalhealth #creativity

·ask-polly.com·Sep 10, 2023

You Think You're Not That Ambitious. Are You Dead Wrong About That?

Dear Fuck-Up: How do you live when everything sucks?

Mental illness is a very much a matter of physiology and not one of will. Anyone who tells you to just try yoga or change your diet or think happier thoughts should have their teeth turn to ashes in their mouth. And I understand the importance of destigmatizing mental illness by rendering it within a medical framework. For too long we have viewed it as a moral indictment, to disastrous effect. However, I also think this tends to throw a certain responsibility back onto those of us who struggle with it. Yes, my own personal brain chemistry is something I must reckon with, but doing so while navigating a cruel health care system, with the goal of remaining healthy enough to face a laughably uncertain financial future, all in service to surviving a world that is everywhere immiserating, hardly seems a good way to answer “how do I live.” The best answer I’ve managed to come up with is that you live with intention of making that question easier for other people to answer. For me, the worst aspect of chronic depression (besides the boredom of it all) is the urge to be alone. If you’ve read my previous columns, you’ll notice that I almost always find a way to bring up our beholdenness to others. This is because I’m a lazy writer, but also because the fact of mutual obligation is what gives me the motivation to write at all. It’s also what animates any politics worth having.

#life #advice #mentalhealth #depression

·theoutline.com·Jul 16, 2019

Dear Fuck-Up: How do you live when everything sucks?