Stop NOW! Things YOU Should NEVER Feel Ashamed or Justify Yourself For!
Life is too short to be ashamed, although shame is to some extent ingrained in each or every one of us. Education and formative experiences from childhood and adolescence play a major role in this. Between healthy self-confidence and a completely uninhibited lifestyle, there is plenty of room for a carefree life that needs neither justification nor shame. In this article, we'll introduce you to ten things that self-confident people never have to be ashamed of.
1. Personal financial situation
There are already reasons why money is absolutely taboo as a topic for small talk. It's a highly personal matter that, if you're ruthlessly honest about it, you can choose to be envious or compassionate about. Most people feel anything but comfortable at the thought of what others think about their bank balance.
The fact is: Live your life and don't harm anyone, then whatever you want can happen to your account. After all, if you have a fat negative balance, the bank will be happy to charge you fees. So, strictly speaking, you're helping to secure jobs by not always having your spending under control.
2. Knowledge gaps
No one is omniscient, however, many are ashamed to admit this and ask questions that demonstrate their lack of knowledge. But really, there are no stupid questions. Unfortunately, this principle is not universally known.
Many new technical terms and abbreviations appear on the scene faster than we can say Google. It is therefore more than justified and certainly not shameful to ask questions when things are unclear to us: In a group, you will almost never be the only one who needs explanation.
3. Failure
There is no shame in being shown our limits; on the contrary, those who use failure to their advantage, for example to change direction and take a different path, can actually only gain from it. In life, we are often denied relationships, jobs or things that we wish for with all our hearts.
Years later, it is not uncommon for us to realize that it was a tremendous victory that we were denied certain things. In retrospect, failure is a form of evolution. If we consider the learning effect from it, it is definitely progress, not regression.
4. A childlike mind
Adult life is mostly about image. We want to be perceived as tough, cool, confident and successful. Ideally, we would like to have the perfect tattoo to this effect on our foreheads. But what good is all this if we just rush through life with a clenched fist without stopping for a moment? A beautiful butterfly, a picturesque rainbow, a cute dog crossing our path –
These moments of the day are completely free and at the same time priceless. Keeping a little the child in us alive brings lightness back. Those who can preserve a little childlike naivety get significantly more out of life. And this is free of psychological weight, without any reason to be ashamed.
5. Mistakes and wrong decisions
Honestly, people who never make mistakes are more like robots. How boring and dull it must be to always do everything right, for there’s nothing like a bad decision now and then to immediately bring more variety into your life. In addition, every mistake holds an undreamt-of learning potential for the future. In any case, there’s entertainment value in a bad decision, or at least a good story.
6. Emotions
Our feelings sometimes come over us at the wrong moment. But that doesn't make them wrong. They distinguish us humans from machines, whether it is sadness, anger, compassion, fear or joy that we openly display. None of these are reasons to be ashamed.
7. Our weaknesses
Weaknesses also make us human. Unfortunately, they also make us vulnerable in the eyes of others. In the course of human history, it was quite necessary and sensible to hide our weaknesses from others. Men in particular would have been immediately excluded from the circle of hunters and banished from the clan if they had failed to perform to their full potential due to injury or illness.
Women find this point a little easier. However, our modern and fast-moving times have unfortunately also taught them that to function perfectly should be the top priority.
8. Wishes and dreams
We all carry within us a longing that seems distant and unattainable. Yet it is these very hopes that bring a little fairy dust into our lives every now and then. We should therefore by no means be ashamed of our dreams. They, and above all the prospect of their realization, are sometimes what make us get out of bed every morning and go to work.
If it weren't for people with visions, we would probably still be vegetating in the dark, dwelling in caves and trees, still howling at the moon instead of planning a vacation there.
9. Our appearance
Admittedly, not even supermodels think they're really, really great. The doubts about our appearance sit like thorns deep inside each and every one of us. It’s amazing that this is such a universal source of shame. We could all agree on the fact that each human is perfect in their own uniqueness, which, while it might not solve our issues with our own appearance, would help us stanch the constant urge to compare ourselves with others.
Here the media might not be the ultimate wrench in the works, but they don’t help. We scan glossy images of our fellow human beings from head to toe every day, whether we want to or not. Unfortunately, the comparison here does not make us safe, it makes us highly insecure. But instead of a sense of shame, a little humility would do us a world of good.
As long as our body is healthy and brings us through the jungle of everyday life, we should be thankful. Never forget the value of health. That would indeed be a real reason to be ashamed.
10. Mood and moodiness
Just because you can't explain it, doesn’t mean you have to be embarrassed about it. Our mood depends on a variety of factors, most of which we have absolutely no control over. A bad day just happens, now and then.
The only thing we should be ashamed of is if we fail to show a minimum of self-control and politeness. It's not our fellow human beings' fault that our mood is currently in the basement. As long as we only suffer ourselves, everything is fine, even when we are in a bad mood.
Today’s Conclusion: Shame, a relic with an expiration date
Whether we owe them to our upbringing or to the genes in all of us that still lie dormant deep inside, feelings of shame are in most cases superfluous. Unless we've done something illegal or highly morally reprehensible, it doesn't usually do any good to feel shame. It would probably be better to avoid getting into situations that leave us feeling ashamed in the first place. That's it for today.