Unsatisfied

I’m often unsatisfied with myself due to the discrepancies between my ideal and actual self.  For examples, I’d like to be more knowledgeable in different fields; I want to be able to draw and design better, know more about music and play saxophone more beautifully, and excel in things I take seriously.  I also want to be fitter, more humorous, personable, and have better ability to take care of others.

I know those ideal qualities should be something to strive for, and I shouldn’t expect them to equal to reality.  I also think most of them are achievable. So it’s probably not the discrepancies that make me feel bad, but my actions in trying to achieve those goals. I understand that to become good at something, I have to work hard and put in lots of effort.  But what happen often is that I put in a certain amount of efforts to reach a plateau but not enough to reach a satisfactory (professional) level, and I don’t like this feeling of being a dilettante.  Although some people may be impressed by certain accomplishments or skills I possess, but I believe any person knowledgeable or good at what I strive for will be able to see how ignorant and immature I am in those endeavors. And it is these limited or inconsistencies of efforts or lack of passion that my dissatisfaction arises.

So why’d I not be able to work harder? A plausible reason that probably serves more as an excuse is that I’ve too many goals and it’s not impossible to do all of them due to constraints like time limitation. Another reason could be that those goals or ideals are not what I really want, but just something I think I want because of social conditioning (e.g. want them to impress others). Or maybe I just want to know something about them but not to become an expert in them, which doesn’t seem true or else I shouldn’t feel the dissatisfaction.

I don’t know what the solutions to this problem are. Maybe it isn’t important afterall (I just think too much) and the problem will disappear as I gradually limit myself to a certain lifestyle or career path. But for now, I believe that I won’t feel satisfied with myself as long as I’m not really good at something possibly because I align my self-identity with being excellent in something or in achieving my ideal qualities. But why that’s the case I probably will have to spend more time to think about it.

Note: There’re lots of topics like this one that I often think about and struggle with but found intractable.  I feel that my thoughts are very muddled in these issues with lots of crappy thinking, and that’s why I want to use the blog to sort out my thinking.  You don’t have take them seriously (as I often don’t), but if you got any comments/suggestions/criticisms, I’d like to know about them to help clarify or put my thinking into perspective.