The idea of bucking up under criticism and proving others wrong is a solid one, but what happens when you can’t turn it off?

Since I was an overweight, dyslexic, sometimes bullied child, I have yearned to prove people wrong. “You’re stupid!” “You’re ugly!” “You’re fat!”

When I was 18, my brother made me a twenty-dollar bet that I’d flunk out of school before the end of my freshman year, explaining that I was too stupid to get through college. I took that wager with one thing in mind. I will prove you wrong!

And I did. Even today—and don’t judge me here—I enjoy the fact that there are more degrees on my wall than his. I proved him wrong, which I also did to a lot of other people who told me I wasn’t worthy. “You can’t be a sportscaster!” “You can’t be a referee!” “You can’t be a writer!

Obviously, I believe the idea of pushing past the naysayers was admirable. But I wonder if we ever get to stop proving ourselves. Today, I’m retired from fulltime work and have accomplished most of what I set out to do, and yet I yearn to do more. This attitude, however, is apparently not a positive trait. Insecurity may be at work, especially when one places too much importance on garnering approval.

In the article “Feeling The Need to Prove Yourself to Others,” Michael Schreiner points out that “…if you’re sure of your own talents, abilities, and accomplishments others’ opinions won’t matter to you much, but if you’re secretly unsure of your talents, abilities, and accomplishments these opinions will matter to you very much indeed.”

After thinking about that, I realized that I fall somewhere in the middle. I know I’ve done things well in my life, but—though I hate to admit it—I still care what others think, something Schreiner explains is a waste of time.

“Your time and energy would be much better spent focusing on your own development than on proving yourself to others. Once you get to a certain point of development you’ll no longer care about that approval anyway so you might as well stop caring about it now and decide instead to go about proving yourself to yourself.”

How is that accomplished? I found a few hints. First, stop angling for perfection. It doesn’t really exist, so let it go. Then there’s the idea that praise can be addictive. When people tell us we’re great, we tend to want to hear it over and over and, like a hamster on a wheel, we keep running to get that praise again. So, remember your own strengths, give yourself an attaboy, and move on. Also, stop comparing yourself to others, which in this social media world is almost impossible but which is a much healthier attitude. And finally, be grateful for  the life you have and for what you’ve already accomplished.

Having said all this, I’m pretty sure switching off that little voice in my head that urges me to do more won’t be easy, but I’m willing to give it a try.

Find Anne Montgomery’s novels wherever you buy books.

Goodreads

Amazon