Tag: Self-Esteem

Is it common to have feelings of inadequacy when comparing myself to my peers?

A student asked:

Is it common to have feelings of inadequacy when comparing myself to my peers? I always feel that in terms of academia, I’m not as strong as my friends. I can never keep my concentration as good as them and I always get distracted. They can study for hours on end and I barely make it thru one lecture.

Here is a fact that is true now as it was true during my time as a student: many students are just putting up a front before other people as if they are coping well or staying on top of everything, because to admit struggle seems embarrassing, especially in a competitive environment.

From the mid-course survey that I did in AY2020/2021 Semester 1, I can tell you that 70-80% of the cohort admitted that they are struggling to cope with the semester and online learning.

If it helps, I am happy to admit that I struggle a lot with online teaching and this 100% online semester. It’s exhausting to teach online tutorials, and even more exhausting and frustrating to have to sit through many online meetings. I actually need like an hour to “decompress” after each Zoom session. So I’m extra unproductive this semester.

Do I feel inadequate, or even embarrassed about this? No. I just know that’s how I am when I use Zoom. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses. My weakness is that I can’t handle Zoom tutorials well. It’s not easy. No need to feel bad about it. It just is.

As for feelings of inadequacy, I used to get it a lot as an undergraduate student. I used to compare myself with people scoring A+s and wondered why I could never be like them, and then I tortured myself constantly by thinking that I’m not good enough.

But if you noticed, saying that you’re “good enough” requires a context. Good enough… for what? If you don’t know yet what you want to be good in, you will never be good enough for anything because there is no context for “good enough” to make sense. So of course, without that clearly defined context, it’s logically impossible to be “good enough” for anything. As it is, you’re probably already good at some things, but the abstract nature of “good enough” lacks a frame of reference, so we will always fall short of “good enough.”

So of course, when we’re young and clueless, we’ll just find anything and everything that we can compare. And we often torture ourselves by finding things that we’re not good at and then comparing ourselves with people who are good at those things. We don’t give ourselves enough recognition that we are good or in fact better than some/most people in other things.

How did I get over my feelings of inadequacy? By recognising my own strengths and weaknesses. I’ve made my peace when I came to the conclusion that I am not as talented to be an excellent research. I will always be a mediocre researcher , and that’s ok. I’m perfectly happy with that because I don’t enjoy research neither do I want to spend the rest of my life doing that. Other people can and will do better at me in research and I’m happy for them. I can live with this.

What do I enjoy doing and what are my strengths? Writing and teaching. I love doing these two things and so I’m very happy that I can do them well. Are there people better than me? Yes. Do I feel inadequate? No, because I recognise I am still a work-in-progress. And I can use the time to gain more experiences and learn along the way.

And I think we forget that there’s a time factor when it comes to being good at something. Some people are great at what they do because they are willing to pour hours and hours and hours of work into it. Should you feel inadequate comparing yourselves to these people? No. They made the decision to dedicate so much time and energy to it. And if you want to be as great as them, then you have to be willing to work hard and struggle for it.

With teaching, I’m willing to do that. And I’m actually very excited that there are people better than me whom I can learn from. With research, not so much. Hence I am quite happy even though I’m not as good as others when it comes to research. It’s just not my cup of tea, it’s just not something I wish to torture myself over.

I sometimes find it annoying that people think they need to be the best in everything, or the most excellent person about a particular thing. Why the need for that? The harsh fact of life is that there will always be people better than us in every aspect of our existence. And just because they are better than us doesn’t mean that we will lose. This isn’t some sick battle royale game where we have to keep eliminating others in order to stay alive. The world isn’t like that.

Focusing on our inadequacy is really just a distraction from the more important things like learning how to be better. The fact that there are people better than us means that there are opportunities for us to learn to improve ourselves. Why are they better than us, how can we up our game to be better than them? These are the more important questions.

How do I deal with imposter syndrome?

A student wrote to me with this question:

How do I deal with imposter syndrome? I’ve been doing pretty well in many aspects of my life recently (this wasn’t the case in the past). I just feel that I’m actually not worthy of all this or soon I’ll just stop being successful. I know i’m putting in more effort now which could be why I’m doing well but at the same time I’m just feeling very insecure nowadays.

I think this experience is very common, and it’s something we will encounter every time we step into a new role or responsibility. I feel that way each time I take on a new task, and my Teaching Assistants (TAs) can attest that they feel that way too when they first became TAs.

There are two issues I do wish to address:

(1) Firstly, when we’re new to something, we don’t identify ourselves as one of “them,” as one of the pros who have been around for longer and who seem to do better than us. It’s good to model yourself after them, but they’re really not the right benchmarks for us to compare with. I say this because you don’t have the same level of experience as they do. So if you keep benchmarking yourself against them, you will always feel that you’re not good enough, and it becomes harder for you to see yourself as one of “them,” thereby prolonging the feeling that you are an imposter.

What’s more important is to learn to settle into your role and take credit for all your successes, big and small, and especially the small ones. Aim to be excellent in the tasks and responsibilities given to you. As you do this well, your team mates or colleagues will begin to rely on you more. This will make you feel more integrated into the team, and you’ll soon feel like you have become one of them.

(2) Of course, everything I said above can be undermined if you have a low self-esteem or are unnecessarily harsh on yourself. Truly, we are our worst enemies. We work so hard to get so far, and once we’ve made it, we start to tell ourselves we are not good enough. That’s really not a nice thing to do to yourself.

I want to share with you an advice a friend shared with me the other day: “You are your own friend. So, don’t say things to yourself that you would never say to your friends.”

We can be really mean to ourselves and say very discouraging and even hateful things. That’s not healthy, and it’s important that we learn to be kind and patient with ourselves in the same way that we are kind and patient to our friends. Once we do this, we can begin to appreciate the good that we’ve achieved by our own effort.

So tell yourself what I say to you: Well done! I’m proud of you. Keep up what you’re doing. I’m sure you’ll continue to do well. :)

Is it normal for me to feel that I never feel prepared for a relationship?

A student wrote to me with this question:

Is it normal for me to feel that I never feel prepared for a relationship? I’m not good looking, not smart, and I’m not even rich. I can’t give a promising future to the girl I like.

I think it’s normal to find imperfections in ourselves and think that we’re not good enough. But we must remember that that’s just how we feel about ourselves, and that’s not usually how other people think about us.

Our looks and our intellect are who we are. These are things that are beyond our control. To some degree, you can improve on it, but you can’t do very much. So it’s not fair to yourself to use looks/intellect as a gauge of relationship readiness, because even ugly and stupid people can still be in happy relationships. There are many around, but we often don’t take notice of them because we tend to pay more attention to the good looking ones, or the very successful/famous ones.

There are two guys whom I know. I don’t respect them very much because they lack integrity. They are fugly as hell, and dumb as f***. And I know that if I were a woman, I sure as hell wouldn’t date them. Yet for the life of me, they are able to attract a lot of women (they’re both cheating on their girlfriends, which is why I don’t respect them). The point I’m making in sharing this is to emphasise that looks and intellect really don’t matter. It’s really an open market, and no matter how good-looking or fugly; or clever or stupid you may be, there will always be people who will be attracted to you.

As an aside… One thing most students don’t realise is when someone of the opposite sex is attracted to you. It’s easy to miss subtle signs. I know this, because when I was a student, I too was oblivious to the fact that some girls were interested in me. Now, that I’m so much older, and as a teacher, I can see how obvious it is. In class, I can see who’s interested in who, and I can see how one party can be so totally clueless about it. So many missed opportunities. Seriously… You don’t need Tinder. Just come for class. Haha!

Ok, back to the question… As for wealth, you don’t need to be rich. You just need to be financially stable because financial instability is the number one reason for divorce in Singapore. It’s hard for couples to trust and love each other when they are in survival mode, struggling to make ends meet. As a student, it is still within your power to be financially stable. It’s not about having a high paying job. It’s about being disciplined with your spending and spending within your means, and of course, saving and investing the rest of the money that you have.

Many couples sabotage their marriages by over-spending on their wedding, honeymoon, and housing. It’s nice to live in a condo or some matured estate. But if it means taking on a huge mortgage that puts stress on the both of you, that’s unwise. Every day you’ll worry about not having enough money to pay the bills.

So in short, you shouldn’t be using looks, intellect, and finances as indicators of preparedness or readiness for a relationship. Looks and intellect especially, are very bad indicators since you can’t do anything about these qualities. So what then should you use to gauge that you’re prepared or ready?

The answer is emotional maturity.

How do you handle conflicts? How do you handle the shit that life throws at you? How do you handle difficult people and difficult situations? If your answer to these questions is: rage quit, or run away by not facing up to the problem, or drown it out through alcohol or whatever poison you use to forget your problems, then you are not emotionally mature enough to handle a relationship. It’s important to learn to develop yourself by interacting and working with more people, either through CCAs or taking your group projects more seriously.

You may have noticed that some of your friends in relationships may display these traits of emotional immaturity. They may have many happy moments, but that is not the real indicator of whether the relationship is healthy. The true test of a relationship is when conflict arises. This typically happens once the honeymoon phase of the relationship has ended (about 18 months). A lot of break-ups happen after the honeymoon phase because emotionally immature people don’t know how to sustain/maintain a relationship once all the wonderfully exciting feelings aren’t that strong anymore (the strong feelings don’t last long if you aren’t aware of this, so it takes a lot of effort to maintain the feelings, and this exercise is an important aspect of a long-term healthy relationship). And so they become more easily agitated by their partners. Conflicts and disagreements arise more easily. And unfortunately, emotionally immature people do not know how to handle this well. This causes a great deal of hurt and pain to both parties. Usually, such relationships won’t last long. And they’ll just move on with their emotional baggage to cause yet more hurt and pain to someone else.

So focus on developing your people skills. Learn how to manage and handle difficult situations and difficult people. Learn how to develop deep and meaningful friendships with people. It will help you mature as a stable person and become a strong pillar of support to your future partner. And as you do your thing with confidence, you’ll eventually find someone you like, and that someone who will like you in return.