I goofed up major big time.
I’ve always wanted to repaint my room from blue to white, because it clashes with my brown furniture (matching colors are very important you know :p).
When I took out some of my wall hangings, they ripped off parts of the old paint. I don’t know what it’s called, but there’s a layer of texture pasted onto the wall. When it came off, it peeled off in big easy chunks, and I thought I might as well get rid of all of it sinced it peeled off so easily. I never liked it either.
Big mistake! Only certain parts peeled off easily. The rest were a major, major pain. I ended up scraping my wall to get bits off, and now it looks hideous. I couldn’t get rid of all of it, so the other 3 walls are still textured while that 1 wall looks like the cat from hell came for target practice (scraaaatch).
Sigh.
The point is this: I realized how you take your mistakes impacts your self-esteem in a major way.
Optimists vs. Pessimists
It’s been shown that people who are optimistic, when they make mistakes or face challenges in one area of their life, treat it as limited to that area. It doesn’t say or mean anything about them, they just fudged up like anyone else they know does.
Whereas pessimists see the mistake as global, and to them it extends to all the areas of their life. They make the mistake mean or say something about them, which can even extend to their identity!
Me doing the wall as an example:
Optimistic me thinking: Damn, this is tough. I shouldn’t have done it…but then I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t. At least I learnt something. Let’s see if I can make this fun…maybe some music. Hey, is friday still on for my lunch with the gang? Should be a good time…
Pessimistic me thinking: Oh crap, this is way too tough. I shouldn’t have done it…damn damn damn why do I always make mistakes? Dammit…this was stupid. I’m stupid. I’ve always been stupid. Damn damn damn…I wonder what my friends see in me, I’m soooo stupid. My life’s f**ked up.
Ooooo boy. You can imagine how many hits to my self-esteem I’d take if I thought like that (ok, I admit it, I was slipping there part of the way, but I got out). The stronger your self-esteem, and the less hits you bring it, the more you’d allow yourself to remember making mistakes are human, and shrug it off.
There’s No Failure, Only Learning Experience
Whenever you make a mistake, it’s helpful to remember:
1) It’s not global. Just because you messed up in one area doesn’t mean you are a mess up.
2) It only means what you want it to mean. Someone might make a mistake and interpret it as a little goof, someone else might make the same mistake and take it to mean they’re incompetent.
3) There is no failure, there is only learning experience.
I know it’s helping me get past this messed up painting experience 
March 28th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
hahaha..sorry Alvin I know I shouldn’t be gloating over your little “misery”, but well, it just takes more experience. So, maybe you could paint more walls - go volunteer to help your friends haha
Good “TRY” ya.. haha ;p
And yes, localise your mistakes and globalise your learnings.
March 29th, 2006 at 12:48 am
Ha! Maybe you should have changed the colour of your furnitures instead. heheh. Look on the bright side, it’s ghetto and hip hop trendy. Aerosol spraypaint anyone? As for the esteem thing, don’t be too hard on yourself. At least you know a cool guy like me. Bwahahaha!!
March 29th, 2006 at 3:02 am
My furniture is brown and my walls are a very cool blue, goes very well together more of a modern retro feel.
Good luck with whatever you choose
March 29th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Hello Alvin!
I was going thru that pessimistic state recently too. Knowing that “there’s no failure, only learning experence” helps to stop the negative hits on self-esteem. Learning how to manage one’s anger & fear enable one to move forward & accomplish the task too.
This post is very useful: Mess up an area, its only that area & we can make it right again. This mess does not represent our life.
Great! Thanks!
March 29th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
Nyah! You guys…
Anyway Kloudiia, no way am I gonna do this again
Newfound respect I have for painters.
Yep, Hanthon, I’m so grateful for your friendship, especially the time you came to help me paint my room…NOT!!
Thanks Celyne, I really didn’t notice I could go retro, but it’s too late now.
You’re welcome, Tracey
P.S. The struggle is over! I have vanquished my walls. Now just to shift all my stuff back in (urgh).
March 29th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
Hi Alvin,
Woah, I’ve experience that too. Hee… the playful mind of my will think “well hack, jst use the the patches as a texture wall and design that face of the wall to some fun and interesting look.” A good situation to extend creativity. haha…
Well for my case, my dad came up with a method to cover the patches and case was solved. heee…. guess things jst happen to fall into place at times.
March 30th, 2006 at 1:03 am
(Note: This is the SECOND time I’ve lost my comment because I either couldn’t read the security code, or forgot to enter it, hit “back” and lost it. Ugh!)
Check out “Learned Optimism” by Martin Seligman: Treating “bad” events as temporary, isolated and external - vs - permanent, pervasive, and personal.
Summaries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
http://www.shearonforschools.com/learned_optimism.htm
http://jollyblogger.typepad.com/jollyblogger/2005/05/learning_optimi.html
March 30th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Thanks Matt!
I was fascinated by learned helplessness when I first read about it. It made me realize how important a sense of control is for a healthy state of mind, and made it obvious to me how some people learn to be helpless with the crazy conditioning they get from all quarters, eg. being rewarded and punished for the same behavior unpredictably.
I’ll definitely explore this subject more. Thanks for the links
P.S. Sorry about the code…it’s not that great, but so far it’s the only WP plugin I’ve seen that does the code thing, which is a big help against spammers. Anyone else facing the same problem?
March 30th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
How does this code thing help against spammers? Cos I’m starting to get spam comments!
Please enlighten me and the other readers, “Almighty Alvin” hahaha
March 31st, 2006 at 12:18 am
Hahahaha oh no…please don’t expand my ego
It helps protect against spammers because their automated bots can’t read the characters and input them (although some spammers are working around this, but for the most part it works, for me it works 100%).
It’s a Wordpress plugin called Secure Image, you can find it here:
http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/SecureImage
It’s just one solution out of many. You can find other antispam plugins for WP here:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Spam_Tools
Hope this helps