This is a partial list which could grow as time passes or as our awareness expands or if you pitch in your own suggestions in the comments section. Feel free to do so okay?
1 Compare yourself with others.
If you want to feel small, inadequate, unworthy and always lacking, make sure to compare yourself with people who you think is better than you in whatever type or form. When you do, you highlight their strengths while diminishing yours - an unnecessary thing to do despite your belief that doing so is the only sure way to look at the world. Whoever or however you learned this self-defeating skill from, continually doing this will keep your life remarkably static, restricted, non-changing. You will also feel perpetually fearful, angsty, angry and insecure.
On the positive side, if you want to feel temporarily happy and good about yourself, compare yourself with others who you think fall a rank lower to your financial / intellectual / physical / psychological / whatever-ial level. Most of us have learned that it is easier- and is less hurtful - to judge than to be judged. Doing the judging gives us the seeming power over others. We then appear, at least to ourselves, as more potent than we actually are. It also empowers us to look at other people's flaws and not recognize our own. We then end up merrily blind, acting as if life is but a dream.
In summary, be blind to your own faults - better yet, project them onto others.
2 Base your identity on what you have, what you do or something skin-deep or something outside of you (your place of work, your place of study, what you do, what you study, what you don't do, the fact that you didn't study, your bank account, the fact that you have no bank account, the color of your skin, the texture of your skin, your facial features, etc.).
The idea is to base your identity on something you think others find worthy.
Make sure you identify yourself as __________ (job title) of ______________ (company X),
e.g.
"Hi I'm (place your name here), writer of the box-office hit movie ____________"
"My name is Atty. ___________"
Or in a tense social situation, break the ice by starting with a spine-chilling greeting: "Kilala mo ba ako?" or "Di mo bako kilala?" ("Do you know who I AM?" or "Do you not know who I AM?")
The point is to disturb others into submission or agreement with what you think of yourself and how.
This could also work in reverse. If you base your identity on how much you don't have, use that identity to elicit pity and / or guilt from others.
Again, the point is to disturb others into submission or agreement with what you think of yourself and how.
This process would be easy to do if you had a Catholic upbringing.
If you're Catholic, you have probably learned how to jump through hoops your whole life to make yourself feel worthy because at zero age you have been told that, even if you're pulled straight out from your mother's womb, you are already a sinner by virtue of you being alive. Add to your original sin the fact that Jesus died for you so nothing you will ever do could even top or compensate for that. Sorry. As all Catholics now know, guilt is a very prized virtue.
3 Treat relationships as an X-deal.
Treat all your relationships as a business transaction. Make sure you do not limit this to your co-workers, business partners, employers, employees, customers, etc.
Relate with family, friends, acquaintances and even your version of God as a business deal. Or maybe, you might not have noticed it yet, you already are.
When praying, negotiate, haggle.
Example:
Tell God that you will stop smoking IF he makes you partner.
Plead with God to make you win P164 million in the Lotto draw and in exchange you will donate half of your winnings to churches and orphanages.
Tell God to grant your wishes and in exchange you will dutifully attend mass every Sunday, and even give 10% of your earnings to the church.
You ask God to magically make you pass your exam and in exchange, you will feed the poorest of the poor in your community.
Note that you can also do these same things in your relationships.
Example:
If you want to make someone join your religious group, bribe them with food, a sense of security / community / protection.
If you want someone to help you move, ask them what they want and then give it - make sure you do the latter before doing the former as this decreases the possibility of them saying "no."
This set-up allows guilt to naturally flourish so once it does, use it to the hilt. Wave it at others to make them do what you want them to do.
4 Treat others the way you don't want to be treated
Follow the age-old cliche,' "I hurt others before they get a chance to hurt me"
This saves you from feeling rejected or unworthy. Constantly one-upping someone takes a lot of effort but every single moment you do is worth it. For a fleeting moment, it makes you feel full, that is until this buzz wears off and you have to get your fix by one-upping someone again.
When choosing someone to one-up, bring out your self-esteem counter and gauge how much self-worth they feel. The lower someone's self-worth is, the easier it is to one-up them. To further sharpen your one-upmanship, make sure the following conditions are present:
a) The one-upee must be invested in the one-upper or the situation the latter has created
Note that instances where a one-upee is invested in the one-upper is when the one-upee is dependent on him/her in some way.
b) The one-upper must make the one-upee further feel less of his/herself. While this is going on, the one-upper must also make an effort to prop himself up. When this is regularly done, a Stockholm-Syndrom-ish dynamic develops within the relationship. Eventually, the one-upee fails to see nothing wrong with anything and everything the one-upper is doing, even if it is to the detriment of the former.
Similarly, you don't always have to treat others like shit in order to live miserably. You can also treat others better than the way you treat yourself. You can one-up yourself with your own permission.
Example:
You can give your relatives all the money they want while you scrimp your savings enough to buy 2-weeks worth of cup noodles - because you'd rather save all your cash for others than spend it on yourself. Because you'd rather see other people live the good life than allow yourself to enjoy yours.
This follows another age-old cliche,' "I hurt myself first before others can hurt me."
5 Guard and preserve your ego at all costs
Do not be like mall security. Do not simply point a stick at the inside of other people's bags and wave them off.
Be like a Nazi. Be paranoid. Ransack their bags and if you find even an iota of a possible bomb-paraphernalia, (e.g. you think that soft rice pudding you're squeezing is for making a bomb) throw the owner of that bag out of the mall.
Similarly, the moment you sense someone deflating the puffed-up image you have of yourself, kick them out of your life. If you can't not cut them off - either due to family or work reasons - stab them at the back. Not literally because you will get yourself in trouble and you don't want to taint your image by being hauled out in handcuffs right?
Assassinate their character. If you have to lie, so be it.
The point is to bring them down good and hard because they revealed an aspect of yourself you don't want others or yourself to see.
Your ego is the only thing that keeps your life going. It is you. If your ego is wounded, it will become frail, flail and eventually die - and you will inevitably go down with it. So protect it. It is your identity. It is the only one that cares for you. It is the only reason you think people want to be with you. You know nothing else. You are nothing without it.
You are it.
In summary, these five tips highlight the fact that nothing is more important than non-change.
Changing means you know something's wrong with you or how you relate with others. But admitting that something's wrong is impossible specially if you are convinced that you are right.
Living unhappily ever after requires non-admitting that something's amiss since that is equal to seeing the cracks to your thought-of perfection. Ironically though, you are also smart enough to not admit you're perfect. You know that if you do admit to being perfect, that would be too vain, even for your taste. You also know people dislike vain people. So in order to be liked, you do not admit or see yourself as vain. But you are. You therefore do all you can to conceal this while at the same time being this.
Just follow these basic rules and you are off to a very good bad start. Goodluck!
2 comments:
Good plan :-)
I especially enjoyed your first sentence. There must be some truth in it because i chuckled for quite a while. Perhaps being miserable has been underrated?
A few sentences could use an editor:
"Note that instances where a one-upee is invested in the one-upper is when the former is dependent on the latter (in any way, manner or form)"
Ouch! How about:
"Note: a one-upee is invested in a one-upper when he is dependent on the latter in some way"
rt123
Thanks ttrtilley! ;) gotcha.
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