The Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner

In short, the feeling that we’re never good enough is a source of constant anxiety for us all. This means that our ideals move further away from us, and we’re stuck constantly pushing ourselves to reach goals that we don’t value once we achieve them. Rather than working toward one goal and feeling satisfied when we achieve it, we raise our expectations as we achieve more. When we look in the mirror, we’re keen to compare our appearances with those we see on the street.Īnd there’s yet another problem with the way we engage with our ideals. We compare our performance to our colleagues’ performance in the workplace. Unfortunately, we tend to use them as nothing more than objects of comparison. We can use images of a better life to inspire us to work hard and achieve more. Of course, high expectations aren’t all bad. Nearly all products marketed to us today are made desirable by convincing us that our lives just won’t be as good without them. Think of all the polished, perfect and wealthy people that are featured in magazines and advertisements. You probably aren’t surprised to hear that these high expectations are fed by mass media and marketing. Some of us want a better job, some of us want more friends, and some of us want to change our appearance. We’ve all got a picture in our minds of what we believe is a perfect life, making our real lives seem inadequate by comparison. If there’s one flaw that all humans have in common, it’s striving for ideals that simply aren’t attainable. But why do we feel frustrated by this in the first place? And it can shape our attitude toward several aspects of our lives.

Sometimes it seems that, no matter how much you practice something, there’s always going to be someone out there who does it a little bit better than you.

The Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner