Self-esteem

Self-esteem is usually worse effected by my procrastination. You clearly have the time and even the skills to do something but because your will-power is not enough, you do not get something done. So to break this cycle I would have to regain my sense of self-esteem.

From my personal experience, when you feel down and depressed, your world-view becomes distorted, narrowed and you start losing perspective on things. In that circumstance, it is very hard to be self-aware of your strengths. Even when things are going well, it is far easier to see your weakness rather than our strengths. I guess that’s human nature.

For me, I have always been taught by my parents to be modest about my achievements. Modesty is apparently even one of the seven Virtues for Catholics but for me, sometimes I have lost an appreciation for the things that I have achieved. For example, when someone congratulates me on an achievement of mine, my instinctive response is to play it down and make it easier than what it really was. I guess that’s a rather neat social mechanism as many people have a tall poppy syndrome as people in general do not like people boasting about things. I guess there is truth in that, some people have an exaggerated sense of self worth and sometimes that self worth is not actually based on anything concrete. But for me, I think I under appreciate my achievements. I see them as something that is natural right for me rather than remember all the hard work and effort I put in.

Thinking this way on “blue days”, I feel inferior, inadequate, stupid and useless (that is why I get annoyed when my friends call me “clueless”). My mind instantly focuses on my weakness and forgets my strengths because they are a “right” for me, they were easy to get. By thinking this way, my strengths have no value to me. Value to a person is entirely subjective it is merely a measure of the work you put into something. Something that you put a lot of work into will have a corresponding amount of value to you.

I can recall one day in high school I told my friends that I wanted to get into medical school. In that conversation, I told them my self-doubts. They were on my people skills. I was very scared that I did not have the people skills to get past through the dreaded “Interview.” I had heard stories about very smart students doing very well in university but not getting pass the interview. I also heard stories about Chinese students in particular who were apparently discriminated against. As I relayed my doubts, my friends listened intently and they gave me their opinions. All of them thought I could make it. They even encouraged me and gave me examples about some of the people skills that I do possess. Looking back, they clearly believed in me, who I am and what I can achieve rather than looking realistically at who I am then. Because at that particular time, if you were to assess me realistically in terms of my people skills, I was nearly autistic! Perhaps that is an exaggeration, but I had severe difficulties in expressing myself, even to my familiar teachers (I stuttered). But my friends looked past that and saw my potential. I think they believed in my power to create, to strive and to reach. They saw and believed in me even when I did not believe in myself. That gave me great confidence in myself.

It also taught me that sometimes the most objective people are not yourself but the people who truly know you best. You forget about your strengths but your true friends acknowledge and remind you of them.

From these experiences, I now realize that I have to work actually hard to focus on my strengths, to remember how much I have achieved rather than focusing on the negatives like how much I need to work on about the unchangeable like why I am so dumb compared to X.

Procrastination

Definition: Procrastination occurs when people are aware that they are wasting time when there is some other pressing thing to be done.

For me, this is one of major weaknesses. I am a busy 3rd year medical student, with upcoming exams, assignments, projects and commitments (work, family and friends). I am finding myself constantly short on time. There is so many things that I need to do with so little time but as I sit down resolutely in front of my computer telling myself that today I will get things done. But… that usually never happens.

I just waste my time doing random things like watching anime, reading newspaper (The Economist!) and watching movies. The effect of this procrastination on me is profound. I fear procrastination will become an enduring and self-reinforcing habit. Every time I procrastinate, I feel the slip of loss of self-control and self-esteem. Somewhere in the back of my mind my greatest fear is that this procrastination is like a black hole that would spiral and pull myself downwards into the abysses.

However what helps is that I am naturally quite an optimistic person. Sometimes yeah, I do feel depressed, angry and frustrated with myself for wasting valuable time when I could do other things. But in every instance I do not think I have ever lost hope in the power of tomorrow. That hope is the one thing that keeps me going. It is based in a self-belief that I can always achieve anything that I have set out to do. Even in my darkest moments, where I start exhibiting self-destructive tendencies I eventually find redemption. That fundamental sense of belief is the thing that keeps me going. But I want to break this cycle; I want to take control again and regain my self-confidence and to achieve my goals.

This blog chronicles and records my attempts to regain control again. Because I have found that if I write and express things, wild and whirling thoughts turn into lucidity and clarity. Also just by the shear act of self-expression, I feel a sense of peace – the writing is therapeutic in itself. I also hope to use my blog to inspire and connect with other people in the same circumstance.

Mother's Day

At the house, whisper quiet

Two souls asleep, hushed

Giving thanks

- Chen

Japanese haiku, its simple and elegant. It is the ultimate in communication. Succinct and to the point.

Pride

One night, lying in bed I re-listened to a lecture on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. The lecture was based on the social virtues that Aristotle thinks we should aim for. For those unfamiliar with Aristotle, his ethics was about the “middle way” approach. For example, a person should neither be prodigal with money (like the story of the Prodigal son in the Bible) nor a “scrooge” – loving the acquisition of money for money’s sake. Instead, Aristotle argues, the middle way of being prudent with money has validity in itself. We should spend money when the need arises but be wise about spending within your means. That seems fair enough to me. It makes perfect sense.

One discussion however was especially interesting. It was Aristotle’s take on Pride. For Aristotle, Pride was taken as the ideal, the middle way (the extremes being Hubris – the excessive pride before a fall and the total lack of self-esteem).

For most people, whether culturally or via religion, Pride on most counts is seen to be something to be avoided. Pride was after all in a list of the cardinal sins by the Catholic Church. To me personally, I have always been taught by my parents to never flaunt myself. That quality along with honesty is very well engrained into me.

So to me, I was initially puzzled at Aristotle choosing Pride as a virtue but as the lecturer explained later, Aristotle meant that pride was: a reverent love for the truth (taken from a quote from an instruction booklet for getting closer to god for monks). That makes sense; a person should know thyself, so that you understand your own special abilities and your weaknesses.

For me though, intellectually, I could understand the argument but as I live my life at university, I realized that I had a self-esteem problem – I did not appreciate myself as I should. Maybe I should have realized this earlier. There were many cases where I was listening to my parents talk about my successes to other parents (which is THE favourite past time of Asian parents). The problem was that I felt embarrassed not joy or happiness at hearing of your achievements. Perhaps my parents over played the “pride is bad, modesty is good” mantra too much for me. Whatever.

Even though, looking back, I have overcome many, many challenges, socially, personally, academically but I havn’t really appreciated myself enough. I did not have a reverent love for the truth. As a result, sometimes at medical school and especially around the release of test/exam marks, I do feel small sometime. I see friends, kind of effortlessly understand topics that take me a lot of time to go through. I see some other people who are very good with their time, they somehow get time to fit a lot of things into their life and still succeed. In the midst of this, sometimes, when the day isn’t going so well for me (everybody has those kind of days) I do feel down… it seems I am shrinking.

The problem I think is that I have not realized to accept who I am. I do lack a sense of self confidence sometime and that I think is because I forget… how much I have gone through and achieved.

If I can remember myself as a socially inhibited student at high school where even talking to a familiar teacher my speech was nervous to a far more outgoing and confident person that I am now. I once was so nervous that when I went to my neighbour’s house to ask for possible sponsorship of the school work day (fundraising for the school by working for other people) I was so nervous that I couldn’t pierce together a sentence! This was not in 5^th form, this was 7^th form. In exactly one year at university, I have developed socially enough that I was capable of getting through the rigorous and dreaded Medical Interview. I have gone a long way!!!

(more later)