34. The Good Thing About Hating Yourself

Excuse the next few lines or so, as I’m going to talk about myself for a bit (yes, exactly, my favourite topic of conversation!)

I’m someone, like many people I suppose, who often gets plagued by negative self-talk.

My brain never seems to need a second invitation to change the topic of inner conversation towards my numerous insecurities and shortcomings. And regardless of any potential external indications that suggest differently, that’s not a particularly fun place to be at times.

The good thing (gotta try and look at the positives, right!?) is that these insecurities or the general feeling of not being ‘enough’ can be quite motivating.

Although it’s hardly great to be on the end of an internal bashing, this negative inner-dialogue can provide a real drive to go and do something about it. Which may not be there if we were totally content with ourselves.

In fact, I’ve found that in those rarer moments when I do seem to be feeling good about myself, my ambition (in whatever area of life that may be) diminishes accordingly.

There seems to be this correlation between the type of self-talk and the motivation to work hard. I.e. the more self-doubt/negative chatter, the higher the motivation to graft. It's a bit more nuanced than this, but basically, the bigger the demons the bigger the drive.

And this whole ‘demons providing drive’ is possibly more common than we may think:

• Virginia Woolf is one of the most celebrated authors in history, though spent a lifetime battling severe depression. However, these struggles gave her the fuel and inspiration for a whole host of her most loved characters and novels.

• Rafael Nadal, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, stated in his excellent BBC documentary ‘Strokes of Genius’ showcasing his rivalry with Roger Federer (big love to Fed!) “I believe doubts are good, never considering myself good enough and always having that doubt constantly pushes me to improve”.

• Staying with tennis, 8x Grand Slam winner Andre Agassi, in his brilliant autobiography 'Open' goes into detail about his mental turmoils and frankly rocky relationship with life. He even states that “I play tennis for a living, even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion, and always have.”

• On Chris Williamson’s podcast Modern Wisdom with PT and best-selling author James Smith (here for ref. I thought it was excellent btw, well worth a listen) who reiterated a similar thought, admitting that his insecurities were one of the main drivers behind his success.

In short, none of these people would have achieved, or would be achieving, what they have without those inner demons.

This correlation is possibly counter-intuitive. When we see people working hard and achieving success in life, the natural thing to think may be that they’re constantly happy, energised, motivated and thriving.

However, I’ve often found that it can be the opposite, and that many people who seem to be doing well in life are pushed by these feelings of self-doubt, not feeling enough, or whatever demon it may be.

There is, of course, nuance to this. I’m not suggesting everyone does everything out of self-loathing (as reassuring as that would be!). Naturally, we can work hard at something and get success purely out of the enjoyment of doing said thing. And similarly, we can simply want to put a big shift in to make the most out of life as opposed to overcompensating for insecurity.

For example, the beautifully nerdy and beautifully savage 5x Jiu-Jitsu champion Mikey Musumeci. During his appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, he talks about how he trains for 12 hours a day (yes, 12 hours, ridiculous right!?) out of the sheer love for the sport, saying there’s literally nothing else he’d rather be doing.

Side note, he then consumes 7,000 calories of pizza and pasta every evening (yes, 7,000 calories, also ridiculous right!?).

I have no idea what the split is between people who achieve great success through the love of their craft, and those who do it from fuelled by self-doubt and insecurities (and everything in between), but I imagine the latter is probably more common than we may think.

And I write this, because in this day and age where we’re inundated with people’s successes, highlights and non-representative best bits on social media, it can be natural to compare ourselves to others (naughty!) and potentially get a bit down, jealous, or whatever it may be.

However, I'm beginning to realise that this is probably a naive thing to do.

If external ‘success’ can often overcompensate for inner turmoil, then without any context of what’s going on in other people’s lives (and more importantly, in other people’s heads...), then we may want to think twice about negatively comparing ourselves. Often, it isn't what it seems, and is possibly a worse option than our own.

And on that, I had better post this. Those insecurities aren't going to overcompensate for themselves.