The pygmalion effect

#1 You constantly wait for things to be perfect to even try. You create weird prerequisites for you to even attempt things. It’s a false sense of perfectionism. Perfectionism is: you try something and never finish it because it’s not good enough — whereas you have nothing to finish, you have yet to even attempt. The perfect plan is actually the one that comes into action, and you will make it up as you go.

#2 You use external factors to skip action. It’s always the situation or the mood or other people. Mood follows action: and while you tattoo the precept on yourself, you still can’t go swimming because you’re too sleepy. You’re the one who didn’t sleep, you created the circumstance. The more you get it done, the more you teach yourself that things can get done, the more you become a winner. Stop looking at people around you to explain your failures. You’ll become a man: it’s not always gonna be your fault but it’s always gonna be your responsibility.

#3 You need to be encouraged externally to do things that are good for you. You want people to pat you and push you forward to get shit done. That person doesn’t exist. That person is you. You need to use the undying fire inside your heart, instead of one you need to constantly fuel with wood outside of you. If you run out of wood you are shit out of luck. Wood are these people around you that serve as motivation sources, once they stop you stop. One day you will be the one in the pool, the music studio, the gym, the company, the ranch counting the corpses of people whose spurt of motivation died down. Until then, I won’t twist my panties if you don’t get it done, I only care about achievers. I give you the keys, you open the door.

#4 You expect an external savior. Look back at a tough situation you had before: of despair, desperation or helplessness. And think what type of adult should have been there for that kid to be happy? And now become that adult. Without becoming it, you are easy to abuse, without it you go through life trying to grab the hands of people and won’t be able to stand back up for long. Becoming that adult will teach you how to walk on your own. At the same time you will become of use to people because you will be able to pick them up, or rather show them a way to pick themselves up too.
You wait for a special trigger in the sky. Those don’t happen in real life, except the time you realize you have to take responsibility for your happiness and future. That is the magical moment. Once you get to that the moment, everything I say will become an evidence. You are your own trigger. You have to fully recognize your flaws and fragilities. Responsibility, responsibility, responsibility is solid and forever. Dependance is passing, childish and a flukey cope.

#5 Your sources of motivation are external. Hence your control is external. But no baby is born knowing what is an internal or external motivation source, those are things you develop in your brain, they are just beliefs/illusions. Which also means — just switch your belief. Stop believing your agency is external, start believing it’s internal — and just like that you make things happen, instead of things happening to you. No more fate. Look at people who believe in determinism: they’re blackpilled and fucking losers and their sink deeper and deeper into apathy, funny how that works. Whereas you will always believe in freewill, you will know that it’s all about your responsibility and you will lead a better life. And even if you could prove to me that destiny is real, it doesn’t change how your outlook should be. You can just believe in fate, and that it’s all positive things laid out for you. All you have to do is go after them, it will make life great.

#6 You have bought in to the lie that genetics is everything. You have people and organizations in your life who claim they are doing you a favor and are brutally honest by saying “bad genetics or bad chemistry are a major factor”. Is that actually a sight of relief? Does it actually make you feel better? No, it again externalizes your sense of agency, it’s just cope. Real honesty is to say that you don’t work hard enough, you’re not consistent enough, not patient enough, and always blaming someone else. They infiltrate mental health and addiction into the genetic level and made it a scientific matter like generational trauma — the genetic basis has never been proven. Inspect what you or your family claims runs in the blood — that is this bloodline’s biggest cope. No. What you make of your genetics is what matters — if you take two clones, you tell one they have good genetics, the other bad ones, at the end of 10 years this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy — but the only difference was mindset. The pygmalion effect means that the way you talk to people about their potential dictates their actual potential. Don’t use it on yourself to sabotage yourself. When you complain about genetics, you complain to nature… I mean you’re part of nature, but nature doesn’t plot, doesn’t overthink. It just made you, it’s a cosmic force. You can’t call customer service and get a reimbursement. Instead, look at the force that made you as a great blessing, be grateful to it, and move on with your life.

#7 You’re entitled. And that ensues from the way you look at life and project it onto other people. Something good about a person? It couldn’t have been because they worked on it, surely… so you deserve it as well. You put yourself in spoil and envy, and you put others in luck and height. You are faced with people who are actually in responsibility, control, who go out and earn things. As you still believe that things should fall into your lap, you get jealous and denounce a lack of fairness. If you knew how the game is played, you would see someone better and think OK they got it from legitimate means, I have to learn from them, I have to see how they obtained that. Don’t take advice from roaches, take advice from achievers.

#8 You use your previous lack of action as an excuse to not get involved in the future. You know what… just because of pride you should want to put in the work now, even if the results won’t be immediate. Just to prove that you can, just to see if you can. You are trying to protect the remnants of your ego. The more you accumulate mistakes, the tougher it is to get started. The sunken cost fallacy is a bias that tells you it’s late to start. #1 and #8 are a frightful combo. Mom has a ritual in the stuck mornings, she says “Look up, what do you see?” “A roof” “Look down, what do you see?” “A bed” “Under the covers, what do you see?” “Two legs, two arms” “Do they move?” “Yes” “Then get up!”

Think about all this negativity exposed and how it made you feel. And transform that feeling into the type of energy you need to change your life.