It doesn’t always mean that you suck and you need to change anything. It doesn’t always mean there’s something for you to learn. Not all failure is your fault. Sometimes you lose, just because this is what happened. You won’t necessarily find any lessons to learn from your failure this time. In this case, you only need one thing. Stop failing. Don’t fail again.

The problem is that you are still stuck with everything that is making your life a living hell. Nothing has changed so far, concerning what you were struggling with from the start. Whatever that you were complaining about or because of decades ago is still intact. Is still bothering you to this day. Is still there as it is, as if this is still day one in your journey of struggle. What’s responsible for your suffering, the moment you came to this world, is still out there, and is still making you miserable. Nothing has changed. It feels like an eternity in hell.

None of this means you don’t deserve any better. None of this means you don’t have what it takes to deserve a better life. None of the above indicates that you’re under qualified, incompetent, useless, worthless, ugly, stupid, ignorant, or lacking in terms of self efficacy. You don’t necessarily need to become more powerful to overcome those challenges. You just need to win this time.

Master Yoda: No more training do you require. Already know you that which you need.

Luke Skywalker: Then I am a Jedi.

Master Yoda: Not yet. One thing remains… Vader. You must confront Vader. Then, only then, a Jedi will you be.

Stop providing your abusers with information or anything that they can later on use against you in order to bring you down.

No good news, no personal preferences or stuff that you like, no casual opinion about something that you don’t care about, no acting in a friendly manner because you’re human, no nothing.

The purpose of them turning everything you say or do against you isn’t only in utilizing information about you that could come in handy in facilitating the process of bringing you down for good in a few minutes, it’s about making you associate everything beautiful in this world with massive amounts of pain, until you can no longer function normally as well. It’s about induction of loss of motivation to do anything in you as quickly as they can. They want you to feel or be totally helpless in order to encounter no resistance while trying to destroy you and everything good about you.

This is where you become an easy target for them, that they can do what they want with it, without that target offering them any resistance.

No answer or short reply can save you from being further abused. Say absolutely nothing. Go no contact, and never look back. Prioritize yourself, for once.

Stop sabotaging your professional or career life just to attract a better man. If they have a problem with your success, it’s probably the result of their inferiority complex or insecurity.

For all successful women out there. No degree of masculinity would ever make a man unable to love or make love to a woman because she’s too successful or financially independent. If anything, these things are an asset that makes him love you even harder.

Their hatred for any of these aspects about you is only a direct result of their major inferiority complex and incompetence.

He doesn’t deserve you, you’re way out of his league, and he doesn’t have what it takes to ever deserve you or to ever qualify for having any kind of relationship with you.

Please, I urge you to not get sucked into this. This is sad at this point. Ease of access and naivete exacerbate the problem. Nobodies are entitled and are aiming high all the time. Don’t end up being their ideal victim. You deserve the best.

Please don’t quit your business or dream job because some insecure person told you to do so because of the kids, to be able to love you more or better, or for whatever reason they can give you for trying to make you give up on your dream or best life.

You judging yourself prematurely is probably why you think you don’t have what it takes. And that, my friend, is because you have a phobia of growth and improvement, because it will make you have no option but to confront how unready and how not so amazing you currently are, and for some reason you can’t seem to be able to live with that.

How far you actually are from your full potential when it comes to how good you really are or can ever be at something? It might take you years to find out what you’re really capable of, but you think square one is a good place to determine whether or not you were built for this. After all, if you really were that naturally talented at something, you will feel like you have a head start in what you’re trying so hard to become great at. It would feel so easy you feel you belong there from the start. Welcome home, you expect to think. I became a writer because I needed that in order to think, discover, and explain what I discovered to those who might get some sort of benefit from it. It took me decades before I stopped sucking majorly at it, at least from my perspective. Imagine if I listened to the feedback or criticism that I could’ve given myself based upon my performance so far in it or as a writer, back when I was still objectively horrible at it. And I consider myself to be someone who is naturally talented at writing and exists in this world to be a writer, from the start, from day one, because it has nothing to do with how good I am at it, it has to do with how much writing as a tool can help me become the person I’m truly meant to be. It’s about what happens to me when I believe I’m supposed to become a writer in order to reach my full creative potential. It’s like the force is strong with you, and that’s why you need Jedi training. It’s not the other way around, it’s not since I’m a Jedi, I became stronger in my force sensitivity. Whomever told you that you need to be super skilled from the start before you even begin deceived you big time. Having a natural talent or ability, and being able to express that talent or ability are two totally different things.

It will take you years, until you stop being horrible at what you’re truly meant to be or do for the rest of your life, even if you’re naturally more capable than everybody else at being the best there is at it, no matter what it is.

You won’t accomplish anything worthwhile ever if avoidance of burnout, work, or fatigue is your north star.

In manic episodes of bipolar disorder, the patient doesn’t exhibit signs of excessive energy only. It is associated with that amount of energy being totally not under control, misdirected, useless, and unhelpful. They do nothing with it. They accomplish nothing with it. No progress whatsoever. Nothing ever takes place or gets done in the manic or hypomanic phase of the bipolar disorder. It is not a disorder that enhances creativity or productivity some of the time or most of the time, until they crash and burn out of exertion or exhaustion. It’s like burning fuel at the highest rate without using any of that fuel at all. Without moving the vehicle. Nothing took place aside from the fuel being consumed. That’s not spending energy, that’s wasting it. And that’s why it’s a disorder, and it’s debilitating.

Narcissism isn’t about being so amazing you’re looking down on everybody else and you’re so arrogant and special you treat everybody else poorly because you’re better than them. It’s when you have no evidence whatsoever to back those claims of superiority up. There’s nothing that can indicate that you’re better than anyone at anything ever. It’s like, I’m so special and unique I’m better than everyone else on the face of the earth, because I said so, without there being any reason that can support any of the reasons why you believe you’re better than anyone. Sometimes you can be really good at something, but you can’t provide evidence for it in order to prove your competence to anyone else. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You know you’re really good. You just don’t know how to prove it to the rest of the world. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s only narcissistic when you cannot provide evidence that matches your claims of superiority, even if you wanted to. You can’t provide evidence, not because obtaining evidence of your competence is hard or unattainable at this point, but because you really are not that great, or you’re not as competent, special, amazing, good, skilled, talented, knowledgeable, or intelligent as you claim to be, or as you think you really are. Your greatness doesn’t exist. You only think it does, because you’re delusional. There has to be an element of psychosis when it comes to narcissism. You will find yourself having to move mountains in a perpetual futile attempt to hide the fact that you really are nothing on the inside. Everything has to be catered toward pandering to the delusional narrative that you’re so special and unique, no one is really like you, even though this is the exact opposite of the truth. That’s why they have to convince you that they’re objectively better than you in every way there is as if their life depends on your opinion of them or your feedback or perspective, because they have no and can never have or provide any evidence to support their claims of superiority. The only evidence they can ever have or get for their claims of being better than you in any way or at anything is your empty words. There can never be any evidence for how great they are other than your belief in their superiority and unmatched competence and greatness. Arrogance on its own does not necessarily mean you’re narcissistic. It’s just an indication of overconfidence.

So you’ve developed an association between energy and mania that would eventually lead to exhaustion and depression without ever accomplishing anything, and an association between being great, competent, or confident enough with being a bad person. And you think you’d be better off never giving in to your energetic creative impulses, working every day on your passion until fatigued, or using achievement as evidence for your competence or as a source for having a solid foundation for your self-esteem and self-confidence. It’s one thing to feel useless because you haven’t achieved something worthwhile in a while, to the extent that you have to keep working yourself to death just to prove a point, mostly to other people, who will only hate you more if you presented something to them that shows you’re more successful, and another thing to feel the need to keep working more, just to stay in shape, and remain as successful, strong, intelligent, competent, skilled, talented, wise, capable, powerful, knowledgeable, or great as you think you are or as you think you could, deserve to, or supposed to be. To live up to your full potential. To become what you’re truly capable of. To become what you’re truly meant to be. To become fully yourself. To become who you really are. To become alive.

But you think life is all about relaxing and never ever getting tired, even as a result of doing something meaningful that you’re passionate about or obsessed with, and only feel alive when you do it, it feels like a crime against nature not to do it all the time.

Your fear of the dark side is why you’ll end up joining it in the end. Like Anakin, your fear of losing your loved one is why you lost them. Your fear of exhaustion is why you’re leading an unfulfilling life.

“You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the force, not leave it in darkness! You were my brother Anakin! I loved you!” – Obi-Wan Kenobi

Everybody listens to you when you explain to them the importance of physical exercise, but everybody will hate you when you try to explain to them the importance of mental exercise.

Work exercises your brain and body like no other. Adopting a lifestyle that is totally devoid of any kind of work will definitely lead to some sort of cognitive decline sooner or later that cannot be countered by virtually any other thing that you can do to exercise your mind or brain, including reading books.

The mindset of being hyper focused on avoiding getting tired in general or because of working too much is not a mindset that can ever be considered good for you, no matter what.

You have to convince me first that physical exercise is bad for you, your health, fitness, energy, or well-being, before you can manage to convince me that excessive workloads are never good for you. You will inevitably get to a point where you find yourself becoming too impulsive for your own good when trying to force yourself to have fun, enjoy yourself, chill, relax, or just rest, when you don’t absolutely need that, just because your body is trying to prove a point. Stop holding me back. I can do better than that. I’m more capable than you think I am. You underestimate my power. I can do it, and you’re preventing me. You have been indoctrinated into believing that you should slow down and rest, because you’re expecting too much out of yourself. Who do you think you are? You think you’re better than us, is at the root of this kind of mindset. I need to prioritize rest and taking care of me. And because of that I need to rest ninety nine percent of my life, and only live up to one percent of my true potential, because your self worth shouldn’t be tied to achievement. It’s like insert your favorite totally unrelated limiting belief here sir, just to win the damn argument, just to make it look like it’s something that is designed to be good for you. If you see anyone working so hard from now on, just try to feel morally superior to them by claiming that they must be doing so because they have a very low self-esteem that makes them feel totally unworthy unless they achieve something. Makes total sense, every single time.

Holding yourself back from giving something you’re passionate about, hell even obsessed with, your all, especially when you know you can do more, or better in it, will always lead to your body protesting that arbitrary, cowardly, irrational, and weak decision through giving you endless impulsiveness, that is perfectly designed to render you helpless and out of control to the point of total non-functioning.

Repressing yourself from pursuing random impulses, desires, or pleasure is one thing, whereas suppressing yourself from following your passion or obsession to the fullest is crushing your spirit on a whole new unprecedented level. There’s nothing you can do to undo the damage that this can do to you.

If this is the case, why on earth would anyone prioritize avoidance of fatigue or burnout over pursuing your passion or obsession to the fullest or to the best of your ability? The reason you’re struggling with burnout despite following your passion or obsession is because you always quit working prematurely before you start to feel rewarded by what you’re doing, because you’re so focused on leaving before you get tired, as opposed to leaving when you feel you’ve accomplished something that you can be proud of for the rest of your life.

You need to do something that exercises your brain, without making you feel like you’re walking on eggshells to avoid making mistakes every step of the way. Work can’t always be that thing. Find other outlets that can fulfill or meet that need that can never be as serious as work.

Sometimes you have to leave work when you still have some mental energy left that is not enough to complete any task related to what you can categorize as work, but still makes you feel like you’re out of control or excessively angry for no rational or real reason other than feeling that you have left work today prematurely without giving it your all, even though on paper, you’ve made massive achievements that are nothing short of perfect by any standard. You have done enough today in terms of achievement, not necessarily in terms of spending energy, or exercising your creativity or full potential. You know you can do more, but you can’t do any more work today.

In this case, it only makes sense to assume that you need to do something challenging a little bit, that is not necessarily work. If you could exercise your mind until you feel you’ve done enough for today, you will face no reluctance to go have fun or rest all you want until bedtime. I highly recommend attempting to satisfy the thinking need or hunger of the genius human to the fullest before throwing in the towel and calling it a day, after you finish whatever that you could do today that can fall under the category of work. In other words, work hard until fatigued or until you can no longer work today, and if you happen to have any pent-up energy left after finishing today’s work, go satisfy the thinking need or hunger of the genius human to the fullest or until fatigued, and then you can rest or have fun for the rest of the day as needed.

Work can sometimes involve a great deal of self control, inhibition, and suppression of your powers or abilities. Even if you feel rewarded because of making progress, still, whatever that you can do today with the remaining energy you still have that counts as work might not exercise your mind or make you use your full cognitive powers or use your intelligence to the fullest or enough for you to feel charged, satisfied, fulfilled, stimulated, challenged, interested, motivated, or alive enough. The only thing that can balance things out in this case is exercising your mind to the fullest through attempting to satisfy the thinking need and hunger of the genius human until fatigued or fully satisfied.

The biggest factor responsible for your perpetual state of helplessness and weakness is the belief that you can’t help or defend yourself, no matter what you do or how hard you try. It is useless to resist. And that weakness will inevitably spread into all other areas of your life whether you like it or not.

Narcissists aren’t good at manipulation. In fact, they’re extremely horrible at manipulation. They can’t lie without you noticing it. It’s too obvious to miss. Lying to them is just saying something false. Period. They don’t even bother to put in the effort.

They only win because you’re stuck with them and you’re out of options. You have nowhere to go. There’s no escape. You’re trapped. They always use every single manipulative technique they know of in every single situation, making it look like an overkill.

You always lose because fighting back never occurred to you. You never even tried to defend yourself. You just let them attack you like there’s no tomorrow. You were told to not sink to their level. Do not attempt to fight fire with fire. In the end, you’re left too concerned with what not to do, and then end up being unable to think of anything that you should do in these situations. The only reason they treat you contemptuously is to make you believe they’re superior to you in every way imaginable. And when you happily embrace that belief, you add to it what it entails. Things like, yeah, they must be really good at manipulation and criticism. They can crush your self-esteem in a matter of minutes. They can make you hate yourself in no time. They can make you hesitate too much and doubt your reality. Bro, you’re attributing superpowers to non-existent entities! No one is there! It’s worse than absolute and total vacuum! They can’t even get small talk. Someone who’s trying to really manipulate you will put in a little bit of extra effort in order to earn your trust. They do nothing to achieve that! You catch them sleeping with someone else and they just reflexively and compulsively deny it like clockwork. Like a program of denial. Even if it doesn’t help them. They will have a better chance if they apologized for what they did. I want you to focus on the absolute lack of intelligence. There’s no superior manipulative thinking. There is no intelligence. There is nothing. They just take the shape of the container. Anything negative that can possibly be done by them that won’t throw them in jail, they’d do as if they get sucked into it. And then they’d deny that anything has ever taken place. Nothing happened. It’s all in your head. It’s like when they tell you that you’d definitely win by volume. A hundred pieces of content a day on all social media platforms. They try everything, not just what works. They can’t fail at hurting you, because they’ve tried everything there is that can possibly hurt any human being who’s alive, that they can legally get away with. Some tactic is bound to work. They’re so focused on destroying you for their own pleasure like there’s no tomorrow, without missing out on any single chance that they can take advantage of in order to accomplish just that. They do it like it’s the purpose of their life, if they have any, because it is. There’s nothing else when it comes to the narcissist other than exercising full-blown narcissism or narcissistic abuse against other people, even fellow narcissists.

The problem is that you return back to them with the intention of not fighting back or defending yourself, because you think you can’t win, because they’re better than you at this. No they aren’t. They’re not better than anyone else at anything. They can’t. They only win because you’re too kind and gentle to fight back, or you think you are. I understand that you need to avoid negativity and negative energy. I understand that you need to not waste your time, energy, or life fighting with people who have nothing to lose, because they can’t have anything in the first place. You need to focus on your life. That’s why you need to not engage. Not because you can’t win them, but because you don’t have the time or energy for this. You don’t have to waste ninety percent of your energy fighting with them every fucking day just to prove a point. That is, assuming of course, you’re not stuck with them because you don’t have the money to move out.

You were told that defending yourself means you’re a bad person. Means you’re like them. Means you’re immoral. You will leave, but you will always let people walk all over you, because you’re not allowed to defend yourself. You have successfully left the narcissist, but you’ve learned nothing. You only conditioned yourself to remain weak and easily victimized for good. And that’s why you’ll get into endless relationships with other narcissists. You’ve escaped the location where the abuse initially took place, but you haven’t escaped the abuse. You took it along with you. Because the reasons why they managed to abuse you are still there. Nothing has changed. And that’s why the memories and the traumas keep repeating themselves over and over again like a broken record. Because nothing has changed. You are still susceptible to what you’ve been through in the past, even though you’ve managed to escape. You’re now just physically present outside of the abusive environment. That’s why you attract someone who can take care of you and protect you from going through any of that again, and hence the codependency. You are totally helpless and in need of being taken care of. Because you can’t fight back, even if you can, even if you wanted to, because you can’t win, or so you were told.

I hate to say this, but believing that you can’t win them, ever, no matter how hard you try, is in and of itself, a limiting belief. That’s why you will never have a chance to win.

It’s not about winning. It’s about not dying without a fight.

Your focus on how to win is what’s making you lose most of the time.

Sometimes you lose because you did everything right. Sometimes you lose because you were right, or because you did the right thing. Sometimes you win because you did something wrong according to your own subjective opinion or according to objective moral standards. It doesn’t have to happen every time, but it can. You win when you win, not necessarily because of what you did or think you did in order to win. Whatever lessons you think you’ve learned from failure are just futile attempts committed by your mind in order to avoid facing the fact that you’ve absolutely failed at something, wasted your time, and have learned nothing in the process. Whatever you learn or presume to have learned from failure only happens to you when you succeed, and your arrogance tries to extend that success to include everything in your past, even the countless failed attempts that have lead to nothing but frustration and questioning any certain beliefs or memories you already have. Whatever that you presume you succeeded or won because of has nothing to do with why you actually succeeded or won, until proven otherwise. There’s a reason that scientific research doesn’t rely upon the results that have been tested only once. Thinking that you can learn from every single instance of failure that you can ever go through is the epitome of denial, arrogance, and delusion. How many times have you been asked how did you do it, and the answer was something like: I have no idea. But for some reason, every single time you fail, you have the option to know, realize, or learn how you can win next time with unshakable certainty. But when you implement what you’ve just learned, you can still fail nevertheless. But this time you really really know why you failed all those previous times, and will definitely win next time. You just need a second chance. This time you’ll definitely win or succeed, because you’ve learned all there is to know, because you’ve failed enough already. You don’t see any cognitive distortion of reality over here. All you see is motivation and positivity. But you are the same person who believes that doing the same things over and over again will not lead to different or favorable results. By changing nothing, nothing will change. And repeatedly failed attempts with the belief that you’ve definitely learned something new this time that’ll make you succeed or win next time is not an example of doing the same things over and over again hoping to get different or better results this time. Because you were told that there’s no such thing as failure, by people who never failed long enough in their life.

We don’t do the right thing because it will increase our chances of winning or succeeding. We do it, because it’s the right thing.