The most frustrating thing about this discourse is the missing sense of proportion.
1. Starting things and setting them down does not make you a phony. It makes you easily-excitable. Thats okay.
You’d be a phony if you deceived someone, including yourself. You’d be a phony if you bought a domain, told someone “I’ll definitely have this site built by next Thursday” and wasn’t honest with yourself or others about your time-management error. Time management errors are okay, especially in hobbies. You’d be a phony if you were so unwilling to accept yourself that fear and pain pushed you to deceive yourself.
The emotion you’re feeling when you look at those 27 unused domains isn’t called “being a phony” it is called “embarrassment” and it is a normal human emotion. Avoid deceiving yourself by using emotion words to describe your emotions.
2. Someone telling you that you are a rockstar does not mean you are a phony. It means you’re talking with someone who fails to understand the importance of humility or wants you to wear a heroic Tony Stark costume to play out the Drama Triangle with them. Anger is appropriate to feel if someone pressures you to play along with their comforting self-deception. In response, you have a choice:
A. Find better friends. A good friend is willing try to see you for who you are: A person with some skills and some skill-gaps and a desire to learn.
B. Argue with them on behalf of humility and your need to be seen honestly. If you need a working relationship with them then you need to care about what constitutes that relationship. If it is respect for who you actually are, then they’ll be willing to call you an engineer instead of a rockstar. If it is their self-deception then the relationship is not trustworthy. You have a right to trustworthy working relationships but that right comes with a responsibility to speak the truth clearly.
C. Obsessively check your workspace for brown M&Ms and get swept up in disproportionate rage or terror if you find any tiny flaw[1]. If you let your relationships rely on you being a rockstar then you’ll set yourself up with no room for yourself or others to make mistakes. That is a neurological block to learning and deeply unkind to all involved.
1. Starting things and setting them down does not make you a phony. It makes you easily-excitable. Thats okay.
You’d be a phony if you deceived someone, including yourself. You’d be a phony if you bought a domain, told someone “I’ll definitely have this site built by next Thursday” and wasn’t honest with yourself or others about your time-management error. Time management errors are okay, especially in hobbies. You’d be a phony if you were so unwilling to accept yourself that fear and pain pushed you to deceive yourself.
The emotion you’re feeling when you look at those 27 unused domains isn’t called “being a phony” it is called “embarrassment” and it is a normal human emotion. Avoid deceiving yourself by using emotion words to describe your emotions.
2. Someone telling you that you are a rockstar does not mean you are a phony. It means you’re talking with someone who fails to understand the importance of humility or wants you to wear a heroic Tony Stark costume to play out the Drama Triangle with them. Anger is appropriate to feel if someone pressures you to play along with their comforting self-deception. In response, you have a choice:
A. Find better friends. A good friend is willing try to see you for who you are: A person with some skills and some skill-gaps and a desire to learn.
B. Argue with them on behalf of humility and your need to be seen honestly. If you need a working relationship with them then you need to care about what constitutes that relationship. If it is respect for who you actually are, then they’ll be willing to call you an engineer instead of a rockstar. If it is their self-deception then the relationship is not trustworthy. You have a right to trustworthy working relationships but that right comes with a responsibility to speak the truth clearly.
C. Obsessively check your workspace for brown M&Ms and get swept up in disproportionate rage or terror if you find any tiny flaw[1]. If you let your relationships rely on you being a rockstar then you’ll set yourself up with no room for yourself or others to make mistakes. That is a neurological block to learning and deeply unkind to all involved.
[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brown-out/