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Originally Posted by Shyone  Hi Angela  Sorry it took me so long to respond, I haven't been on my computer lately. In regards to your question, I don't think there has ever been a specific event in my life that could have lead to my negative self concept. I tend to think that it was succession of events. I failed countless classes in school, and in result had to go to summer school four years in a row. That could have contributed, I'm not quite sure? |
Because you're already semi-decent at writing, I'll say that you should generally put a question mark after questions, not as a way to express doubt. A "
" emoticon works better for that.
I tell you this because you're secretly a smart person (hence your being here; hence you being able to write what you have about yourself), even if you may not know it, and that I think you're taughtenough, yet will be able to benefit from such advice. It's a smart person thing.
In terms of your failure at school, the most likely outcome is that you were in situations that didn't at all play to your strengths. Instead, you were in situations that weakened you, and as a result, you didn't do well, and as a result, you were encouraged to spend more time on what you didn't do well, ultimately falling further behind since you were working from the place where you were weakest instead of the place where you were strong.
Stop me when you hear something familiar:
- Where you constantly getting bad grades or marks in one subject, and then forced or, at least, "encouraged" to do more work in that area to shore up your marks?
- Where you not encouraged to do more of the subjects and the things that you were really doing well at school?
- Did you have teachers who kind of spoke "at" you, as if there was no one there to really teach, instead of "to" you (which requires actually paying attention to the students you have an their unique configuration--their personality and learning style)?
Maybe you haven't stopped me by now, but my bet is that you probably did.
You see, in school, there are two things constantly happening: (1) people are learning, and using that knowledge to do well at tests, and (2) people are either using their strengths, or not.
If you stop doing #1 for long, you have issues with schooling and you either fall behind, or you get pushed on ahead without the appropriate knowledge and keep teaching you the continuation of what you don't know, which you really can't understand, since you don't know the basics that you missed or didn't originally understand because #2 was happening in a way that was not favorable for you (i.e. you weren't using your strengths).
For me, I fell into the category of "got pushed ahead without appropriate knowledge because my strengths were completely ignored." I wasn't a dummy, so it certainly looked like I knew what I was doing, so it didn't seem right to hold me back. But my marks were confusing, since I'd be brilliant in some classes, yet almost failing in others. This created a pattern of confusion in most of my teachers as they wondered how I could appear to be intelligent, yet not get decent marks. Many attributed it to lack of effort (they were right, but also wrong; hard to explain). Few did anything about it. Those who did saw me excel in their class to the degree they were able to shore up my knowledge that I didn't have and put me on par with the rest of the students, knowledge-wise.
In terms of raw capability for intelligence, I was far more intelligent than most of my peers, and a few snapshots of my education results reflected this, but the school system--in Australia, and to my knowledge, in most of the world--isn't based on intelligence, but knowledge and memorisation. Testing tests your ability to remember things and write them out, not your ability to apply knowledge.
All through school I was subconsciously thinking, "why should I care about this knowledge? What is it useful for?" As you can imagine, that didn't create a very fertile ground for knowledge to be planted and grow. Already, at that young age, using my intuition which hadn't yet, and never did, get numbed, dulled, or deemed as something I shouldn't listen to, I was able to see that, really, what we were learning had very little application to reality and real life. Some of it was interesting and helped develop some of the core skills I draw on today, but when it comes to knowledge, I use virtually none of what I learned at school today. I don't use math; I'm terrible at math. I use technology instead. I don't use geography; I'm terrible at it and don't have a need for it, and when I do, I use technology. I'm terrible at history; who cares about history? Not me (I know some people do, and that's fine; I just don't care about it, and it doesn't benefit me). I'm not great at science or any related subjects, since I'm not good at math or memorisation; I don't use much science today, yet I'm probably more knowledgeable and apt at some of the extensions of science such as psychology and other fringe areas that can't really be specifically defined. I use English and can write better than most people that I know—people who go to university, even—yet I couldn’t tell you what an adjective is, and barely remember what a plural is (I’d just look that stuff up; I prefer to use my memory for more important things that align with my strengths high-level, “general” conceptual strengths).
I often like to say that in the last 4 years, I learned more than I did in high school.
I'm exaggerating when I say that, and that's a bit of an incomplete picture (since you're always learning and developing your prediction skills, which is valuable), but it's pretty accurate, and it makes a good point.
I encourage you not to define yourself by your past. My past was garbage. I encourage you to be defined by your best. Not "your best" in terms of what you have evidence of you doing, but what you feel you're intuitively capable of doing.
If you don't feel you know what you're intuitively capable of doing, that's ok, too. That just means you need to find out. Very few things in life are going to be certain for you when you are at this point, but if you persist and try to focus on things that make you feel good instead of things that drag you down, you'll slowly but surely make progress.
And the "slow" aspect doesn't have anything to do with a defect that you might have, and everything to do with the nature of personal growth. Personal growth is hard. Personal growth is seldom undemanding. Personal growth is often slow. About a year ago often I'd be stumped or in a slump or weeks or months. I still functioned, but in terms of what I'd call *real* functioning, I was just getting by. Now things that would take me months to solve or work through take me hours or days, tops.
My point is that you have everything you need to excel in life. You just have to believe you do and dedicate yourself to finding what it is you have within yourself that will allow you to shine. You're the only one who can allow yourself to shine. Make the decision sooner rather than later, because there are a lot of people who think like you're thinking now who could use your help when you realise that you're already shining, you just aren't aware of it.