Does getting what you want make you content/happy?

[questconnect]

Hi all. I am really struggling with dissatisfaction and really a deep sense of inadequacy. This is not a new feeling and the background is that by all objective measures I have a good and fortunate life.

Nevertheless, I feel like a total failure. This is largely directed at my career - I like many aspects of my job but I have really failed to live up to expectations and basically I'm just not that good at it. I'm in my late 40s now and people younger than me are constantly being promoted above me and it really hurts.

I hate myself for caring so much about this, especially given my good fortune, and I read a lot of Buddhism which reminds me to focus on the process, not the outcome, to practise acceptance, all that kind of thing. That helps in theory but I just can't seem to really absorb it - intellectually I do understand that external validation won't make me happy or feel a sense of self-worth, it has to come from within ... but I still can't help feeling that if only I were more 'successful,' and just generally 'better,' I would feel better about myself.

Does anybody else feel like this? Did career success or anything else actually make you feel 'better'? Do you have any advice!!?? Thanks in advance!

I also feel like a failure. I thought the only solution was to set a goal and try to succeed at it. I did that, and it made me feel worse! I suppose it's so easy to discount your own achievements.

Even so, it sounds as though you deserve a promotion and should get one. What did they say the reasons were for not promoting you?

Although to be fair, the process of acireving my goal made me feel good, like you say. Maybe I just need a new goal now. Maybe you do as well.

oh no @doona - I'm sorry achieving your goal though made you feel worse. I can identify though. For example, I have written a book (not out yet). Some people have told me the book is OK - even pretty good. I still feel like a failure. Because I haven't done loads of other things I should have done to achieve success - write two or three books! Write one book faster! Write and publish loads of other things too! Etc etc etc! I can see from an intellectual point of view that this is a bit mad - but i just can't change my perspective and it's driving me mad!

Maybe we do need external validation. There's all that talk about how we don't need it, but it's proably a lie. My close friend is a successful author and she laps all that stuff up. She's much happier and nicer than she was before she became successful.

I realised that you aren’t measured by your career achievements, that everyone is replaceable. So you should concentrate on having a good home life.
Work to live, don’t live to work.

I don't know @kangarookenny I totally agree with you in one sense - but in my professional life, people are very much measured by their career achievements and judged quite harshly on that basis. And those who achieve a lot enjoy quite a lot of status and esteem. While I recognise not all of them are also happy, I can't help thinking that looking elsewhere for self-worth is the consolation for not doing as well (though having said that I absolutely do not judge others by those standards myself). Or at least, I hope I don't!

What is it that knows you're dissatisfied?

It doesn't sound like your profession is conducive to contentment. If there's never a Good Enough then you'll always be chasing the next step and you'll always feel inadequate. Who would you be if your company went bust or your profession simply didn't exist tomorrow?

@Mysticguru - I am not sure! I am not sure if I have understood the question.

@AmbushedByCake I am an academic/researcher. It's a really competitive field and one that I have attached my identity to quite closely, there is no doubt about that. If my profession didn't exist ... that's a really good question. I think that would be OK. If my profession continued to exist and I wasn't in it, I would probably feel terrible. I think that is the problem in some ways - I feel that where I am in my career is a sign that I have failed, but to walk away would also suggest failure. This suggests that I fundamentally feel like I have failed! Achieving 'success' seems both impossible and the only route out. But I know this is not a healthy way to live.

Look at everything you have in your life without judgement or use of your imagination. Come back to the here and now. To reality without imagining!

There are no issues. Only those that you're creating! These created illusions are the basis of your fears!

@mysticguru - I think I know you are right. I just have no idea how to do that.

It's a discipline.
Stop chasing what you haven't got.
Delight in what you have.

Daily gratitudes.
Mindfulness.

It's a balance, and you have to find the point which works for you. If you were happy to keep chasing 'success' that would be fine. You say you aren't happy, so you need to redefine your priorities.

I speak as the daughter of an unhappy mother for whom nothing is ever enough, by the way. If it wasn't her achieving, then we had to achieve. We were never quite good enough, we could always do a little better. It's exhausting and undermining.

Hi @picklemewalnuts - thanks for your response. It's really interesting and sobering. I try very hard not to reveal how I feel to my kids. I think I'm a pretty relaxed mum in the sense that I vaguely encourage them to do their best but I am very definitely not focused on achievement at all costs. In fact, sometimes I worry I go the other way, because I absolutely do not want them to think that their self-worth (or my love for them) rests in externally validated 'achievements' (as my own seems to do). But thank you for the warning, you are right.

It sounds as though you are managing not to focus your discontent on your DC though, so that's great!

Teach them, and you'll accidentally learn yourself!

I applied for a job recently and didn't get it. I could beat myself up, but the reality is someone was a better fit than me.
Everyone else is allowed to do well, it's not just reserved for me!

I comforted a boy who was coming last in a race, and getting in a state about it. I pointed out that the hundred plus kids watching knew they weren't good enough to even be in the race, and they certainly weren't laughing at him for being 7th fastest runner in the school. He really settled down and relaxed at that point. He'd been so focussed on winning, he'd forgotten he'd already succeeded.

That sounds lovely @picklemewalnuts Feeling for that boy! And you're absolutely right. I think there's an element of black and white thinking - if I'm not the very best, then by default I'm the very worst. I know it takes discipline to change this thinking and I have not had enough of it! Sometimes I wish there was a drug I could take which would just shut off that part of my brain and give me some .... peace?! Funnily enough, immersing myself in work is one of the few things that actually does that. Anyway .... thanks for responding.

@questconnect

Simply turn off your imagination! Do not create stories that are not True!! And if through habit you're creating stories, do not attach to them.
Observe them for the creations they are. Illusory!!

Hi OP, this is exactly how I feel too. I haven't fulfilled my potential at all. I did well at school, but a complete lack of confidence has held me back in the workplace and I feel so disappointed in myself. I'm now late 30s and really starting to see it even more .

Objectively, I'm in a perfectly ok job, but I'm not happy, not on a particularly high wage, and my job isn't important. I also don't have kids (out of choice) but I think that adds to the feeling of inadequacy.

I have no advice really, but I know how you feel and I'm interested in the responses.

I wish I knew you all in real life, you seem very wise.

@PeanutButteryAddict - I'm really sorry you feel the same way. Lack of confidence is so debilitating. It has definitely held me back. For me, it's like a war is going on in my mind. The strange thing is that I think I look reasonably calm from the outside but meanwhile my brain feels like it's ripping itself apart - like there's someone constantly yelling at me, telling me I'm inadequate, not enough, a failure, pathetic, whatever.

I have found some Buddhist teaching useful - the idea that that person yelling is also ME, and that even though it doesn't seem like it, those feelings are trying to help me and I need to welcome them in, pay attention to them, and stop fighting .. myself. I think that makes a lot of sense but I am not sure I've been very good at practising that. I can't shake the feeling that if only I were more 'successful' I would feel better about myself and happy.

I had extensive therapy at one point, and he helped me identify two conflicting inner voices that were trying to assume control. The idea was to recognise each voice, thank it for its contribution, and then decide how to proceed- usually a middle of the road direction.

For me, it was 'show house perfection' v farmhouse/baking/free range kids vibe. I wanted salt dough and water play, and busy happy active kids, at the same time as a house that never got messy.

@picklemewalnuts yes, that sounds pretty similar to me to the sort of Buddhist 'advice' I mentioned above. I suppose the equivalent for me would be that black and white thinking around 'success' - to take the middle of the road, where just because I am not enormously successful does not mean I am an abject failure. Thanks for continuing to talk to me about this.

For me it helped to know who the voices were and how they got there. Then I could weigh up their contributions.

I Also find it helpful to identify who has the problem. So when a toddler throws toys about, the problem is mine because I don't like toys everywhere. It's not the toddler's problem. Toddler doesn't care where they are! Therefore there's no point expecting the toddler to change. When a child can't find their PE kit for school the child has the problem. So the child needs to change their behaviour to solve the problem.

Also, given a problematic situation, what can I change? What is in my power?
I can't make my husband tidier. I can't make my boss kinder.
I can make myself a space away from the messy husband and the mean boss. I can learn not to care what the mean boss says, and I can apply for jobs with a different boss.

Does that ring any bells?
Identifying what the problem is, who has the problem, and what you can change around the problem.

Sorry, I read your posts and ideas pop up! Feel free to ignore them if they don't resonate!

@picklemewalnuts It does make a lot of sense, thanks. I think in my case the mean boss is me - in that nobody is really being mean to me, I am being mean to myself. So .... I can't change my situation. But I can try to be kinder to myself about it. Another thing for me is about process/outcome - if I focus on the process things are better. I read an analogy today about dogs with bones with the digging being the reward. I need to live more like that I think.

Some of the most succesful people in the world have gone down a road of self destruction, often dying young, where do you draw the line?
I think happiness from getting what we want is very short lived, maybe its the way we are programmed, to continually evolve.

This. All of it.

Plus I would add not measuring yourself solely by your job / career (though - to go back to the boy in the race scenario, if you are working as an academic, then you are right up there in a race that the vast majority of the population will never be in).
What else do you achieve in life?
Can you grow sweet peas ? Bake a cake? Hold a tune? Swim 2 lengths ? Make someone's day by noticing their new haircut or complimenting them on their new glasses? There are so many things we can achieve in life and it is a mindset to notice those, rather than noticing something we can't do, or don't manage all the time.