It is internal strife that makes life so exhausting (reposted and shared); it makes sense!

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This post was last edited by altpage on 2016-11-16 at 20:34. Author: Cong Feicong | Columnist for Yi Xinli. “Being poor is painful; what’s more painful is the rejection of one’s own inadequacies.” " 01 Have you ever experienced this: feeling tired and stressed all the time, even though you haven’t done much? I often feel that life is meaningless, and I don’t know what I really want. Sometimes, once you know what you want and have a direction to work toward, you feel tired even before you’ve started doing anything. Then it became excited, but couldn’t hold that excitement for long; it faded after a short while. This is actually because you’re self-destructing. Human energy is limited; when you expend too much on internal struggles, less energy is available for external activities and productivity. At this point, you think about things outside, nothing has been done yet, and just by thinking about them, you already feel tired. 02 A major cause of internal strife stems from your desire for strength and excellence within yourself. There are many more excellences that you desire. I’ll list them out roughly for you; they include the following: you want good grades. Although you don’t aspire to great wealth or prosperity, you often feel dissatisfied with your appearance. You hope to do things better, achieve more accomplishments, and have good taste, a pleasant looks, and extensive knowledge... You’re never satisfied with your *habits*; you desire better ones. I hope to be able to keep exercising, dieting, getting enough sleep, completing tasks to the end, being decisive and having good time management skills… You’re always dissatisfied with your own personality and desire to possess many positive traits: you want to be brave, strong, optimistic, hardworking, fulfilled, and decisive… Sometimes, when you see others, you silently envy them, thinking to yourself that I also want these things. Sometimes, when you realize you’re not good enough, you feel a sense of disappointment and want to strive to change yourself. Most of the time, you’re silently fighting with yourself: I need to become better. Perhaps you have never deliberately listed exactly what qualities you consider excellent. But this feeling of silent competition, I think you must be familiar with it. There are many more excellences that you desire. Your usual way of coping is to get hyped up, encourage yourself, demand things from yourself, spur yourself on, and scold yourself. Constantly setting secret goals for myself, in every aspect. As a result, I get more and more tired the more I play. The result is that you keep changing, constantly striving and working hard, even if your body isn’t making an effort, your heart never stops trying. Thus, there was internal strife. The more you want to do, the larger the goal, the stronger the sense of insignificance, and the stronger the feeling of powerlessness. 03 In real life, it’s fine to strive for something better and more excellent, or to want to possess certain positive qualities. But if you insist on pursuing those things at all costs, that’s where the problem lies. Firstly, it causes tremendous harm to oneself. Even though you strive to be excellent, it’s undeniable that failures will inevitably occur. Because no one can be excellent at everything, all the time. Besides, it’s not necessarily the case that something bad happens; as long as your standards and benchmarks are flawed, it’s easy to experience negativity. Whenever you go through something bad, how do you treat yourself? That is, whenever you experience being poor, lazy, cowardly, procrastinating, wasting time, making mistakes, failing to go to bed early, etc., how do you treat yourself? Usually, I tell myself that this is bad and wrong. You start to hate yourself, despise yourself, scold yourself, and wish you could get rid of yourself or even kill yourself. At this point, you are no longer living within yourself. You’re living in a fantasy: How wonderful it would be if I could become another, ideal version of myself. “The stronger the desire to be excellent, the more you will reject the version of yourself that cannot achieve excellence. The more you despise your horrible self, the more energy you have to spend on rejecting yourself, and the more exhausted you become. The more I try to do things, the less capable I feel, and my performance gets worse. Then they reject themselves even more, falling into a vicious cycle. Striving to reject it, yet unable to get rid of it. There are two streams of vital energy within you fighting against each other: one says, \"It has already happened.\" One said: “This must not happen.” There is no harder battle in the world than this. This is internal friction. Internal strife exhausts you and makes your life increasingly unhappy. The greatest internal struggle for a person is rejection of oneself. Being poor is painful, but what’s even more painful than that is the rejection of one’s own inadequacy. Given some of your psychological issues, the probability and frequency of you having bad experiences are actually very high—far greater than those of having good experiences. So most of the time, your subconscious is engaged in self-rejection and causing internal conflict. The second aspect of the cost is that it also causes great harm to others. The more you engage in self-destructive inner conflict, the worse your mood becomes; your emotional capacity decreases, and your tolerance for others diminishes. Consequently, your expectations of others rise. At this point, you fail to see others’ limits and merely keep demanding more from them. But others aren’t like you; they can’t force themselves like you do. Eventually, they no longer want to play with you, and then you damage the relationship and lose them. You set high standards for others because you can’t meet them yourself. (Further details to follow) 4 Some people say, then shouldn’t we pursue it? Is it wrong to strive for excellence, responsibility, fulfillment, diligence, and strength? No. Striving for excellent grades, good habits, and good qualities is very good. What causes pain is not the pursuit itself, but the obsession with it. If your aspirations exceed your capabilities and are not appropriate for the situation, frustration is inevitable. When you haven’t experienced excellence, it becomes very important how you treat yourself. Can you allow yourself to be not okay sometimes? Can you allow yourself to make mistakes and perform poorly sometimes? Can you allow yourself to be imperfect sometimes? If you say it’s possible, then, can it be allowed this time? A healthy state is to enjoy when things go well, and to accept them when they don’t. Work hard when you have the energy; rest when you don’t. It is normal to accept that A and -A exist alternately. More often, it’s beyond your control; suddenly, A happens. If it’s bound to happen, why not this time? It’s fine to have made up your mind, but if things don’t work out, don’t push yourself too hard. It’s better if it goes well; but if not, that’s okay too. It’s acceptable. It’s great that you care about excellence, but don’t hate those who are poor at it. When you allow it, you stop rejecting yourself and stop fighting against yourself. With internal friction reduced, more energy can be devoted to external tasks, which in turn leads to better results over time. It’s like playing mahjong: it’s better to win, but it’s fine not to win either; at that point you realize that you can actually perform better. Because your energy is directed toward external battles, rather than being consumed by the idea of \"I must win.\" Playing mahjong in a relaxed and joyful manner actually leads to better results than playing with the mindset of having to win every game. If you really lose a game. Just reflect on it; don’t torture yourself too much. After all, one can’t win every game. Let’s take another example. Even though it’s time to study*, one still can’t resist playing games. In that case, we must accept the fact that human self-control is limited. I’m playing games; just focus on playing and don’t blame yourself. After wallowing in self-blame for a while, my study efficiency became even lower. I should have kept my mouth shut and lost weight, but I still ended up eating. Just eat it if you’re comfortable doing so; be more careful next time. Self-control is indeed a good quality, but no one can always succeed in exercising self-control. After feeling self-reproach, there’s no energy left for self-control, let alone the strength and confidence to lose weight. So don’t force yourself to do so at all times and in every situation. It’s like when you suddenly get hurt—do you still blame yourself for getting hurt? If you get injured, then you’re injured. But when you have a belief that “hitting oneself is stupid”, you start calling yourself stupid. Life is full of difficulties; bad things are inevitable. Others haven’t come to take it down yet; don’t start taking it down on your own. I got hurt, and I had to sprinkle some salt on myself and scold myself. Why bother? Just forgive yourself – it was just a bad time this time. After doing poorly, I even despise myself. It’s internal strife. After a setback, forgiving and comforting oneself is how one builds up energy. 05 If you can accept yourself and stop rejecting yourself. Then congratulations, now you can finally take a look at yourself. You start living within yourself, staying by yourself. Internal friction is eliminated. You can still strive for excellence. Just don’t reject yourself when you experience something less than perfect. You can stay with your flaws and then work hard. It’s not about spending time cursing it or rejecting it first. When there is no more excessive internal strife, your excellence will naturally emerge. Excellence that is effortless is excellence that brings joy and ease. But both culture and childhood present you with a difficult journey—to be excellent, one must endure great suffering. I don’t believe that it’s possible to be excellent and still happy easily. Only when you are willing to be within yourself and spend time alone can self-reflection begin, and growth can also start. You’ll understand why you resist your flawed self so much. We’ll talk about this later. 【It’s internal strife that makes life so exhausting】