There is a quote saying “If someone else has done it, you can do it too”. Could we just think deeper instead of getting excited and saying “yes!”.
Probably you have also heard that environment1 forms us and conditions our action. But what is environment for a human being. You probably think that we all live in a more or less same environment, time and the conditions that form us are fairly similar and hence we all can do same things if we really want, if we have the will power. But to examine what could the environment for a human being be, let’s consider two different people.
Sally has been brought up in a normal family, meaning that her parents have been having conflicts but have never been beating each other up. They were talking with Sally when she was sad, they were asking why she is sad and tried to make her feel better. They were explaining why some things were going wrong and that it was not her fault. They were supporting her when she wanted to attend to a painting class for example. Eating something sweet or buying a toy when she wanted weren’t causing problems and crying most of the time. And she has never been left alone when she was crying.
Max on the other hand has been born in a family that also can be considered as normal because he has never been physically abused or his parents haven’t been divorced. He also has got higher education. But his parents haven’t been very attentive to his needs when he was a child. He has never received an understanding talk from his parents when he was sad or crying. When he wanted things, he was often receiving angry glances from his dad. He have not had the opportunity to go to painting classes or try to do something he wanted. He was also seeing quite often how difficult it is for his parents to buy food or he was rarely seeing his parents smiling and happy. And he has even encountered with violence in the family.
So, the environments that formed these two people were fairly different. The way they learned to communicate with people is different. The expectation for the response from the world to their needs is different. Self-image is different. The deep, unconscious impression of the world and how life works is different.
The more subtle is something, the more subtle are the ways it’s being affected. So, with our extremely complex psychology, the environment (in the context of forming our action) is something much more complex than merely the culture we live in or the time we live in, and consists of countless things, has many dimensions*. If it has million aspects and structural parts that can be different for everyone, then expecting different people to have similar performance is strange.
[ What are these aspects and dimensions*?
Everything that affects the process of forming behavioral patterns2 . Everything that affects you so that you change to adapt to that thing.
If you were never told that you can do certain things and be good at things like playing some games or doing things with other children, you might have had problems performing things in groups where once you failed or weren’t successful. For dealing with that uncomfortable feeling in future you might have tried to be unnoticed in groups and might have been conditioned to fail in similar situations. Because you’ve never had the help to know that you could fix and be better, you got stuck with the conditioning and with the behavioral pattern of performing bad in certain groups where there is a competition.
Or everything that contributes to the formation of the image of the world, yourself or people.
If, for example, the house you were living in during your childhood was old, dark and ugly and the people around you had unhappy faces, you would probably have formed the image that the world is a dark and unhappy place and the natural way to be is to be unhappy, because your parents are unhappy all the time and there is no reason for happiness. And probably later in life, when you will live by yourself and will have learned many things about life and will have tried to create happy and beautiful life, you will be wondering why are you so apathetic, sad or/and depressed often, why are you feeling pain without a reason. And when there are such feelings in life, how can anything else be important? Is it not the priority to feel good about yourself and about life first before acting? ]
If someone reacts to the situation as threatening or is unfamiliar so that he/she can’t act appropriately, then how can we expect from this person to succeed in that situation? Or if someone has deep feelings of not belonging and not being loved then how can he/she act creatively and emit well-being? It is not that this person should not want to be creative and achieve well-being but the first step and the only way to make it possible might be the acknowledgment of the problem and understanding it. And going deep into understanding might make you find out that life is not about success and about who gets more and who is better. Because when you see the bigger picture and when you love, you need nothing because nothing is ultimately important, because no one is watching whether you achieve or not and even if someone does, they really do not care. The only one who cares is you. Life is what you live and feel. And if by understanding you find out that you don’t need success to feel good and live a good life then who cares? Won’t you benefit from living stress-free and free life? Because the goals supposed to be things that make you happy, but the process is hard and the outcome soon loses its appeal. But if you need no goals for living enjoyable life, then the whole process of life can be a joy.
Did you wonder why there are so many anxious and depressed people now-a-days? Why are many people having panic attacks out of seemingly nowhere? Is the competitive way of living the optimal way for our well-being? And whether this is the way to go. To create a society in which only “strongs” have place and are free from anxiety of being homeless or hungry. Only those who are fitting in the places someone wants us to fit. And how stupid we are that we don’t see what’s better for us and what are we working for. A society who will never give a damn if you stay hungry and have no shelter. A society in which you have to pretend and imitate and torture yourself for not only having money for covering your needs(which are being artificially increased and becoming more and more unnecessary) but also for feeling good about yourself, because you are fed with this idea of success and you don’t know yourself in other dimensions that require nothing to flower. From grade one we are being deluded about what we are.
I am not recommending going to live in a forest or have one chair and a bed but this - Just think deeper on an everyday basis whether you need what you do or want. And I am not about doing what you mostly enjoy and have no fear of failing. But if the path is a struggle, think about whether that goal is worth it. Especially when everything we are after has its problems and is never going to be a perfect place. And don’t you think that the world needs you to do what you will love doing, something that not many people are doing and something that will be a gift to the people you work for.
World needs you to be free from the fear of failure.
1. Some common synonyms of environment are background, milieu, mise-en-scène, and setting. While all these words mean "the place, time, and circumstances in which something occurs," environment applies to all the external factors that have a formative influence on one's physical, mental, or moral development.
2. A recurrent way of acting by an individual or group toward a given object or in a given situation.
