Peer Pressure. Another double edged sword.

Why do we make the choices that we do? Why do we do or not certain things in our life? In a perfect world there would be two very simple answers to these questions. Conscience and desire. In a perfect world our decisions would be based solely on doing some combination of what we know to be right and what we want to do. And in the absolute best of circumstances what we want and what is right would be the same.

But we don't live in that perfect world do we? There is another thing which creeps in and often takes control over our decision making process. That thing is peer pressure. And it is certainly not a simple thing. It is complex and often angst ridden and frustrating. We quite often know what we want to do and what we should do, but due to peer pressure we end up making a different choice. Why?

While thinking about this today, I came across an article someone had posted on Facebook entitled

15 Things You Don't Owe Anyone At All (Though You Think You Do)

The bottom line is really fear. How does this work? How is it that much of our decision making process is ruled by fear? Well to understand that we really need to take a look at what peer pressure is. According to dictionary.com peer pressure is social pressure by members of one's peer group to take a certain action, adopt certain values, or otherwise conform in order to be accepted.

I think a little more in depth of an explanation is needed. Generally your peers are the people whose opinions matter to you. They are all of your friends and family. Most of us decide that being cool in their eyes is important. And we will often go to great lengths, many times violating our own personal code of ethics and our personal desires in order to be accepted by our primary peer group(s).

We fear not being cool or accepted by the opinions of those that matter to us and often that alone will cause us to do terrible, mean, sometimes downright despicable things. We feel forced to act a certain way even if we are not being told exactly what to say or do. Much of the time the actions of our peers and the surrounding circumstances very strongly imply what we are "supposed" to do. 

If you are out with a group of your friends and they happen to pick on how someone is dressed or looks, some facet of their social life, their race or sexual preference, it is hard for some of us to stand up to the bullying and make them stop attacking their target. It is the right thing to do, but still not very easy. Our desire to do the right thing is overridden by our fear of not being one of the "cool kids". You can deny that it matters to you until you are blue in the face, but if you give in to peer pressure, then being accepted matters to you.

Peer pressure is what causes us to allow our families to have such a big say in our lives, even after we become adults. We want their acceptance so even though they no longer have any legally binding control over us we nod our heads and say they are right and do pretty much what they want, so that they will still love and accept us. 

Truth be told, anyone that holds their love and acceptance hostage to you agreeing with what they say or do isn't worth looking to for love or acceptance. You should be who and what you want to be independent of what others are going to say or think. 

Now having said that, is peer pressure always a bad thing? Well it is the collective thoughts and opinions of how you should and shouldn't act according to your friends and family and to a larger degree the whole world. Aside from it being wrong, to a certain degree, peer pressure is what keeps most of us from acting out in horribly violent ways when something doesn't go our way. From time to time nearly all of us have scary vile chaotic thoughts. 

We think awful things like, I wonder what that person's brains would look like oozing out of their ears if I hit them with this hammer just right. Or, if I kill this person they won't be making my life a living hell anymore. If I open the passenger door and kick this person out of my car while we are doing sixty I won't have to listen to this insufferable nagging. We don't act on those thoughts, because it is wrong and because we think about how everyone else will react to such a horrible scene.

So while peer pressure can steer us wrong, it can also keep us on the up and up. Until we reach that perfect world, where what is right and what we desire are constantly uniform, use common sense to show you when a few dashes of peer pressure are okay and when you should stand firmly against the tide for what you believe in.
 

Gamer Dreams

In an earlier post I talk about games, video games in particular and the positive effects that they have on the people who play them. ( Video games. The bane of modern society?) For the average person they can help improve things like hand to eye coordination. They can also help with pattern recognition and memory improvement. For people with certain handicaps video games can often be used to help lessen the impact. They can do things like helping the deaf learn to speak.

All of that may be new to most people, but is something that I have known for quite a few years now. A recent article in Game  Informer magazine about the effects of video games on the dreams of the average gamer, however, kind of blew my mind. The article says that video games actually change the way a person's subconscious mind works. It says that the minds of people who play video games on a regular basis are different from the minds of those who don't.

Yeah okay, different maybe, but in what way? The article went on to say that the average gamer has less nightmares than the average non gamer. At first I thought, that is ridiculous. How could that possibly be true?

But then, I really started thinking about it. I've been an avid gamer ever since about the fourth grade. And I really can't remember ever having any nightmares. In fact most of my dreams are freaking awesome. I have often wondered why other people have nightmares and I don't and I never really came up with a good reason for why not.

Video games teach creativity. They cause us to practice using our imagination to get out of difficult scenarios. I have known for a long time that they helped me to solve difficult problems while awake. It never occurred to me to think that they would do the same for problems in my dreams.

It does make sense though. For years I have known about something called lucid dreaming, where the dreamer realizes that what they are experiencing is not real and once having made that realization can change their dream at will.

When I am asleep there is very little I cannot do. I often have limitless power at my fingertips. I can fly, shoot lasers out of my eyes, blow things up with a thought and move impossibly large objects just by a few simple waves of my hands. I am never trapped and there is always something I can do, no matter what the situation.

After thinking through all of these things, it caused me to accept that the article may be right. So, having trouble sleeping? Break out the old video games and give them a whirl. And even if they don't work to get rid of your nightmares at least you'll have had some fun in the process and gotten your mind off your real world problems for a little while.

Competition makes the world a better place

When I say competition is good, I am not talking about the kind of slandering that a lot of politicians get up to. I am talking about the effect that two or more companies competing in a single area has on the overall product the average consumer finds available for purchase.

Oh look a history lesson.

In the early 80's IBM began to market computers to the public. The Operating System they were using was called PC-DOS which was effectively MS-DOS with a few proprietary changes. IBM made a licensing deal with Microsoft to use MS-DOS rather than having to come up with their own OS.  And later versions of Microsoft's OS are now called Windows, but up until recently Windows has just been a graphical overlay run by a DOS shell.

The net result? Within a couple of decades PC's or PC clones are now in nearly every home in America. That deal has probably had the biggest impact on how Microsoft came to be the company that it is today. For decades Microsoft has destroyed Apple in overall sales because their OS is on more machines than that of any other company.

The irony there is that IBM came to Apple first and Apple refused the licensing deal. For a long time Microsoft was light years ahead of the competition. Even today most games and business applications intended for wide scale use come out for Windows first and then other platforms later, if at all.There were other options available but most of them were more expensive and not as widely used. For all intents and purposes Microsoft had a monopoly with no real competition.

As a result their product suffered. Whether consciously or not the programmers knew that how good their product was did not matter because Microsoft held such a large portion of the overall market share. New iterations of their software were often full of bugs and according to many, not an improvement over the software that was already on their computer.

People were more or less forced to use it anyways. How is this you say? Well you may or may not realize it but hardware manufacturers write the firmware for their products to work with the most up to date OS and often do not include any backwards compatibility. New hardware models are made on the average of once a year. After a couple of years you can no longer replace parts in your computer with the original parts. Eventually you are forced to upgrade to the new OS.

Also in most corporate type businesses, the employee is required to use a company computer with all the company approved software on it. Companies that write software, both business and gaming, want to write it for the OS that is going to get used the most.  That way they can be sure that the most copies of that software will be bought.

So for a very long time Microsoft was king of the hill even though a number of other companies made better software and even though Apple actually made better computers than most of the PC clones on the market. What happened to change all of that?

Well a number of factors really. Microsoft had earned itself a pretty bad reputation and some people were willing to go with any choice just to get away from using Windows. Some of those people turned to Apple and its MacOS. Others found out about Linux a free and open sourced OS, with much better security than either Windows or the MacOS. A number of programmers fed up with Microsoft began writing more software for Apple.

Has Microsoft been knocked off the hill? Nope not yet. But at least now there's a few others around to keep them honest. Now anytime they release a shoddy poorly put together product it hits them right in the wallet as they lose customers. If they want to keep their market share they have to work hard and put out the best product they can.

And that is good for every one of their customers, people like you and me.

Ask before you tell.

"You can only boost a man up a ladder if he is willing to climb"

That's a recent quote I found inside a fortune cookie. And while it may not be perfectly worded it is very true. The people in our group do their very best to help other people whenever possible, but what often happens is we spend a great deal of time and effort struggling to provide assistance to someone that isn't even looking for it.

We each have our own beliefs as to what life should be like and even those of us with similar visions still don't see things exactly the same way. And quite often we get stuck in our own head. We take it for granted that other people see things the same way we do and that they think the same things we do. So with this image of how things should be, we offer to assist others in coming more in line with our vision. But they refuse the assistance and we become momentarily confused.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. There's a whole bunch of different ways of saying it. They all basically mean the same thing. Don't waste your time attempting to help or change someone that doesn't want it.

A lot of people, women in particular, tend to decide that they know how a person, generally a man, ought to be. And with the right manipulation, they think that they can change that person into exactly who he should be.Without asking him what he thinks, or giving him a chance to say how he would like to be, they begin the long arduous process of turning him from the person he is into the person they want him to be.

Typically, somewhere along the way arguments spring up because she pushes him in a direction he has no interest in and often does not have any idea why she is even pushing him in that direction. She says she is doing it for his own good. He disagrees. They fight. She gets hurt because she feels she is doing the right thing He gets mad at her attempt to control him.

Her vision and his vision are different. If they sat down and talked about it, there's a chance they could unify their visions and work towards the same goal. But as long as she has a secret agenda that he knows nothing about she is going to want him to change in ways that he has no interest in and he is not going to understand why she is offering. People are the way they are because it is how they want to be. You are not going to get a person to change without them agreeing to, without them deciding for themselves that change would be good.

The problem here comes from assuming that one knows what is best for another. And that is something that is very rarely ever true, at least where adults are concerned. If you want to assist a person first find out if they are open to assistance. Ask questions. Be clear on what it is that they want and what it is that they do not want.  If they do not want coaching, guidance or support your efforts to provide those things are guaranteed to fail. If they do not want to change, don't try to change them.

Pros and Cons

Today a bit more about how warped the English language is. We have a habit of borrowing words from other languages and making them part of our own. Over a period of hundreds of years the exact original reason for picking one word or root word over another is lost. Our tendency is to steal a word and then over time to add prefixes and or suffixes to change the meaning of the word. Sometimes it just doesn't work though. Examples follow.

Pros and cons is a shortening of the Latin phrase pro et contra which literally means for and against. For the most part, when we make a list of pros and cons we are really setting up two lists, one of things that are good and the other a list of things that are bad. We often make lists such as these, compare the lists and then make some decision based on the comparison of the two lists.

Used in this context, pro is typically a good thing and con is typically a bad thing. A professional is someone that is good enough at a thing that they can and do in fact get paid to do that thing. So, a confessional should be someone who is so bad at that thing that there is no way they could ever get paid for doing it, right? No, a confessional is a place where people go to admit their sins. Wait! What?!?! Really? Actually, it is. Since the Latin root of the word confessional is fess, which means to speak, it makes perfect sense. Adding the prefix con, would make the word about having a "bad" talk. And what else would you call a conversation about the bad things you have done?

Next we have one that actually stands on its own as a word. Fusion. It is the act of blending or uniting things together. So, profusion should be the act of blending or uniting things together in a good way or a "forward" way. Well it is and it isn't. But, mostly it isn't. Profusion means a great amount of something or an abundance. So, confusion should mean a small amount of a thing or a lack of something right? It means bewilderment or perplexity. It means a lack of understanding. In a weird way profusion and confusion almost work as antonyms.

Then we move on to one of my favorite words to make fun of. You'll see what it is and why in a second. We start with progress. It means forward movement. Regress means backward movement. Digress means to move away from or deviate from the subject at hand. Egress means moving away from or finding a way out of a place. From these examples, you could rightly assume, that gress means movement and that the prefix applied to it means what kind of movement or what we are moving in.

So, we have this brand new country, one where the people forming it are doing their very best to learn from the mistakes of others. They are doing everything they can to make it a stable and lasting form of government. Why on Earth did they have to name one of the parts that make up this wonderful system Congress? Did they not realize that what they were actually calling it was bad movement or backwards movement?  Was the person who came up with this idea attempting to intentionally sabotage our system? Is it any wonder that it takes forever to get anything done? Why wasn't it called Progress? That's what we want out if it isn't it?

Names have power. They do limit to a certain degree what a person or thing can do or become. Perhaps we should change it. What do you think?

Just do it!

We have a tendency to avoid things that we find  unpleasant or that we really don't want to deal with. When something comes up that is suboptimal, we often steer ourselves in a different direction. We believe our lives are made better by finding a different path. This is often not the case.

The other night I heard a conversation between a couple of my roommates. One was going to cook dinner. Impeding her progress was a specific dirty dish. Now I am not clear on whether or not she was going to use the dish to cook with or if the issue was that it was just physically in her way, preventing her from having full access to the sink or counters and whatnot.

But instead of simply washing the dish and then going on about her business of cooking a tasty meal, she decided not to cook. Worry not, she didn't starve. Other food arrangements were made. The point is extra time and money were spent that didn't need to be.

Then the next night, she came into the kitchen, again, planning to cook dinner. Immediately a string of curses could be heard as she started swearing about how that same dish was still there, still dirty. Two days in a row her ability to cook was being hampered by her choice to let a single dirty dish get in her way.

Now, I am not suggesting that we should just ignore the fact that other people leave things in a less than perfect state. It is not okay for us as adults to leave messes behind for other people to clean up. But why let something that would take less than two minutes to wash dry and put away change our plans for the evening? Not only do these things take up our time and energy, we take up the time and energy of others complaining about them. That time and energy could be put to better use finding out who left out the unclean item and getting a commitment from them to do a better job cleaning up after themselves in the future.

We have agreements to keep our home clean, for each person to make sure they don't leave behind things for others to deal with. But, none of us are perfect and from time to time we are going to make mistakes. Some of us more than others, but it happens to all of us. Taking it personally, getting upset or angry when others fail to do as they have agreed does nothing but ruin your mood.

And letting these little things get in the way of our plans for the day, is literally allowing the mistakes of others to control our lives. Each time a big thing doesn't happen or has to happen differently just because we decide to avoid dealing with a little thing that little thing is controlling us. Think about your daily life. How many things are changed or even prevented from happening simply by things that you don't want to, but probably should deal with?

Scary, dangerous, life altering/ending things I can understand not wanting to handle. But something that will only take a couple of minutes to handle and has no other major impact on anything? Just do it and get on with your day.

Winning

My son has this habit that he has started recently. The first time I saw/heard it, I thought it was kind of cute. First, he gets this great big grin on his face. Then he does this kind of dance where he wiggles his butt and and his shoulders and shouts out "I WIN!"

If it stopped there, I wouldn't feel that saying something was necessary. But he usually repeats himself a couple of time and then follows it up with "you lose! haha" I am sure that this isn't something that he came up with on his own. And I am sure that it came from watching someone else, someone who is old enough that they should know better than to act that way.

What's the big deal you say? I should just be happy that my son is celebrating a win right? Again, if he was just doing the first part, I wouldn't mind. But he is also celebrating the fact that the other person is losing. He is practically rubbing their nose in it. And that is not okay.

Life is filled with winners and losers. But it doesn't have to be because losing is about perception. If someone wins a tournament but gets no enjoyment out of it have they really won? If someone comes in second  or even twenty second place but had a great time testing their skills against others, had fun playing the game and improved their skill set along the way are they really a loser?

When we compete against others there is only going to be one person that comes in first place. But that doesn't mean that person is better than everyone else at that thing. It just means that they happened to do better on that particular day. Maybe the guy who is the best was sick that day and couldn't compete. Or through some unfortunate fluke he got knocked out of the competition early.

As I said before, when my son does this little dance it is really cute. He is fully in the moment and enjoying his success. But as a three year old he doesn't realize that he is making fun of the other people that he beat. The problem with letting him continue this habit is that most of what we think is right and wrong, most of what we are ever going to learn about what is or is not acceptable behavior happens between the ages of three and eight. If he continues to do this now he will most likely do it when he is older.

One of the keys to being successful and well liked is to win as often as possible and at the same time to do your best to make sure others don't lose. Sure, you might have come out on top, this time. But a whole lot of the other people did a great job as well. They may have done even better than you in some ways, just not in all of the ways that were being judged. 

A true champion, a successful person, a winner does, their best to create circumstances where everyone wins and nobody loses. Minimize the difference between winning and losing. Share the victory. Celebrate your win. Just don't bring others down while you do it.

What would you give up?

We all have an idea of how we'd like things to be. Maybe you aren't happy with the car you drive. Perhaps its where you live, the clothes you wear or who you live with. It may be something different for each person. But, all of us would like our lives to be different. Or so we say.

If it is true, as I have said recently, that we do exactly what we want to do and don't do what we don't want to do, then we must not want that "thing" that we say we do. Or at least not enough to make it happen. Maybe we don't think it is possible, so we don't try. Maybe we tell ourselves its just not worth the effort. Maybe we simply procrastinate saying, there's plenty of time. But, do you still want to be telling yourself that when you are sitting in a retirement home lamenting the fact that you didn't get what you wanted out of life?

Every moment of life is precious, because our lives are finite.  Why start to get your life on track at 70 if you can do it at 40. Why wait till forty if you can do it at 20? Why put it off for even a single moment?

If it weren't possible there wouldn't be people accomplishing the things that you want out of life right now. Nobody on this planet is any better than you are. There are opportunities everywhere. Successful people take advantage of the opportunities that are already there and create new opportunities out of adversity. Is there a lack of adversity in your life?

While I do indeed believe that, the love of money is the root of nearly all evil. Money is simply a tool. Now, having said that,  it is a very powerful tool, one which can change our lives for the better. In fact, nearly all of the problems that plague the average person can be solved by increasing the amount of money that one has.

As far as whether or not its worth it, well that all depends on you. What are your motivations? Who loves and depends on you? Even if you wouldn't strive for success just for yourself, are the happiness of your friends and family worth a little sacrifice on your part?

Some people, like motivational speaker Les Brown have this inner fire driving them to succeed. He was born in and abandoned building and given up for adoption. His adopted mother was single. She worked as a cafeteria attendant and domestic assistant. While still in grade school he was declared educable mentally retarded.  A combination of love and gratitude drove him to succeed. He wanted to become something, so that his adopted mother's sacrifice would be worth it. He gave up his free time and effectively most of his childhood to make that dream come true. When he was first starting out he would often be out knocking on people's doors after nine at night, still trying to get a sale for the day, so he could go home and say he accomplished something. Now he is a multimillionaire and one of the world's best motivational speakers.

How about your favorite athlete, musician or movie star? Do you think success just fell into their laps? For most of them success came at a price, one that other people weren't willing to pay. You might say that they just capitalized on innate talent, but that's really not true. Yes, talent in some area is required in order to be successful.

But, practicing that talent, honing it to a razor sharp edge and then sharing that talent to the world are all necessary steps. How many hours do celebrities spend improving their game or working on new material? Rehearsal or practice time isn't just measured in minutes. Strategy meetings don't run themselves. How much time do they spend away from their loved ones? How much sleep do they lose due to someone mismanaging their time? Because that's the key. For the most part, what we give up is time. Time doing the things that we enjoy right now, so that we can enjoy our future even more.

Is it worth it? Of course it is. They make millions of dollars and have tons of adoring fans. Plus, at the end of the day, they can be proud of what they have accomplished, of the life they have been able to provide for themselves as well as those they care about.

What would you do, what would you give up to be able to say the same? And...why haven't you started already?

The truth behind the excuse pt2

The truth is you always have a choice.You have a choice or even multiple choices, in every single circumstance. If a man holds you up at gunpoint and gives you the option of losing your gp or your hp(gamer humor), he isn't forcing you to give him your money. You are free to ignore him, his threat and his gun. If you do, you stand a very good chance of getting shot. Perhaps you could struggle with him, get the gun and shoot him instead, chase him off or tell him to give up his money.

Most people, being intimidated by the person wielding the gun, choose to give the thief their money. They do not want to deal with the potential consequences of defying the person with the gun. It is easier to lie to themselves and everyone else and say that they were forced to give up their money.

Back to the examples above. You did forget to take the trash out. But it was only because you didn't want to do it in the first place. It was not important to you. Regarding the audition, you kept the agreement because you didn't want to anger your spouse or disappoint your child. Plus if you hadn't kept it, it would be your fault if your kid didn't make it into that prestigious school. Unlike the first example, there were real consequences here.

You made a conscious choice. You wanted your friends upset at you more than you wanted your immediate family displeased with you. If that were not true, you would have blown them off instead of your friends. Or course, you didn't really "want" your friends mad at you, but you decided one or the other was happening and picked which one it would be.

Just because we are not pleased with the consequences that a choice we could make are likely to cause, it does not mean that we do not have a choice, that that choices is not an option. It is a choice, just one we are not likely to take. Acknowledging this is an enormous part of being a mature responsible adult and removes the possibility of you being a victim.

We, as people, tend  to make the choices that will impact us in the least negative way possible.

The responsible person will state that there are no other good options. The difference is the victim will state that there are no other options.

Most people go to work every day that they do because they want to. Though it sounds funny that is the real truth. But, if you ask them if they want to go to work, the majority of them will, in fact, tell you that they do not. They would rather stay home and sleep in, play video games or spend time with their kids. When faced with the opportunity to go to work or do one of those other things, given the choice of just one over the other, very few would choose to go to work.

If that is true, why aren't there more empty chairs at the office every day? Because things are never that simple. Without money coming in we would lose our homes our cars and perhaps even our families. We work because we would rather have the results of working than the results of not working. In other words we work because we want to.

There is a consequence for everything we do or don't do. When deciding whether or not to do something we fit all the variables we are aware of into an equation and decide whether doing or not doing that thing will produce the result we want or will avoid the result we don't want. Then we act accordingly.

What it all boils down to is, every single thing that we do, we do because we want to. Every single thing that we do not do, we do not do because we do not want to. Any other explanation is a lie.

The truth behind the excuse pt1

One of the biggest problems we face, as individuals, living in this world is getting along with others. Most if not all of the time this is due to one form or another of miscommunication. There are two main reasons for these communication breakdowns.

The first is the other person does not understand what it is that we are saying. Either they think they do so they don't ask probing questions to clarify the situation. Or they know they have no idea what you are talking about but don't want to or are afraid to ask. So they make assumptions based on what they think it is that you might have meant. And then things get screwed up beyond all recognition. That is not what I want to talk about today though.

What I want to talk about is probably the most common reason for miscommunication between two or more people. Dishonesty. In the past we have discussed little white lies, like does this dress make me look fat or was dinner to your liking? We have also talked about the way our minds distort, delete and generalize incoming data, causing us to not accurately remember most of what happens in our lives. (Yay documentation) .

But, there is a third way in which we are dishonest with both ourselves and every other person in our lives. It happens to pretty much all of us, though most of us are completely unaware that it happens, even while it is happening.What am I talking about? I could just tell you, and I will. But first I am going to share with you a couple of examples.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are asked by someone you live with to take the trash out. You don't want to do this chore, especially not right now. You are in the middle of watching a show on the TV that you are very interested in. The person isn't going to go away until you say something though. So, you agree to do it after the show is over. 

Finally, it has been three hours since you were asked to take out the trash. The show you were watching has come and gone, as have several others. You are tired and go to bed. The next morning, the person who asked you to take out the trash last night comes to you and begins to tear into you. Why didn't you do what you said you were going to do they ask? You tell them you forgot. While technically true, this isn't the truth.

Another example. You and some friends have been looking forward to a night out on the town for some time. At the last moment your spouse reminds you that you agreed to drive your eldest child, a musical prodigy,  four hours to his/her late evening audition for Juilliard, today. You bail on your friends. They of course get mad and want to know why you didn't hang out with them. You tell them that you had no choice. You had to take your child to the appointment. Again, there is truth to your excuse, but it still isn't really the truth.

See, the truth is that in both circumstances, you had choices.  In the first, you broke an agreement you didn't want to keep and in the second you broke one you wanted to keep and kept one you may or may not have wanted to keep. The real truth is, we as people, all of us, do what we want and do not do what we do not want to.

Now, before you blast that statement back to the Stone Age, let's be clear on what I mean when I say want. Every single one of us has wants and desires. We know what it is that makes us happy and what its that we want to spend most of our time doing. In most cases however, we spend the majority of our time doing things that are not on the list of things that we want to do. Why is this?

Well, its called obligation. We tell ourselves that we aren't doing what we want because of other things that we say that we have to do. We say that we have no choice in the matter. And that is the simple convenient lie that we tell ourselves and other people. It is how we victimize ourselves. But, it isn't true.

Expectations

Pretty much every person has a desire to be accepted by others. We all want to be loved, to feel needed, and to feel affection. You could say it is one of the most basic of all non-physical needs. What makes me say this? Love and acceptance are wants and not needs right? Aren't there only three basic needs? Well, no.

Our bodies need food, clothing and shelter to keep us alive. And studies have been done showing that without love and acceptance we will die just as if our physical needs have not been met.

One particular study was done in Nazi era Germany. It was done using two groups of newborn babies. The first was shown all of the regular love and care that newborn infants are usually given. They were comforted when they cried. They got held and hugged and talked to in that overly sugary tone that nearly everyone uses when talking to a baby. They all survived.

The second group did not get any of that. When they were hungry they got fed. When they were dirty they got changed. If there was something medically wrong with them it got taken care of. But, other than that, the second group of infants was completely ignored. None of them were ever shown any affection. They never got any compassion or emotion from their caretakers. Every single baby in the second group died.

Love and acceptance are needs. When we are really young we have to rely on others to love and accept us because we don't know how to love ourselves yet. In a perfect world this would be a simple and automatic procedure because we would all love one another unconditionally. There would be no ulterior motives and no reason to hold back that love from one another.

In the real world however, things do not work that way. Instead of loving one another unconditionally, people have expectations. When those expectations are not met, love and acceptance are usually held back. The problem with this way of doing things is that everyone has different expectations. We all see the world slightly differently.

It becomes some kind of a sick mind game trying to meet the expectations of every person we meet so that we can get that affection that we so desperately desire. It is not possible to please everybody. In fact, most of the time it is not possible to please more than one or two people at a time.Each person has their own version of how you should be and it includes just about every adjective in the dictionary.

Thinner, taller, wider, older, more muscular, chubbier, tanner, whiter, younger, quicker, longer hair, less hair(facial or otherwise), different eyes, a smaller nose or mouth, more ghetto, less country, more Asian, or less European just to name a few physical attributes. Then there are all of the skills, talents and abilities that you have or don't have and all the choices that you make or don't make (fashion or otherwise) that don't match every other person's ideal version of you.

A person will literally go crazy attempting to please everyone. But, we need love and acceptance to survive, so what should we do? Well, there are two answers to that and both are important.

The first is, if you are old enough to read and understand these words then, you are old enough to love and accept yourself. Since you have been with yourself your whole life, you are equipped to have realistic expectations about yourself.  And, even if you fail to meet them, you can choose to love yourself anyways while you work on meeting said expectations.

The second is to pick a small group of people, some family and friends, who have similar expectations of you that you will do your best to meet. Ideally, they should be people that will love and care for you even when you fail because none of us is perfect and there will be times where that happens. These should be people with your best interests in mind and flexible enough to realize that what they think is best and what is best for you are not always the same.

Then, while there is no need to be rude or disrespectful, you can pretty much just ignore what the rest of the world thinks about you, good or bad. Just let it all go. None of it matters. A single person can give you all the love and affection that you will ever need. And you are a single person.