From having bad parents to a head that’s kind of butternut squash-shaped, there are a lot of things that can hold you back from achieving all that you’re capable of.
However, in many cases, the thing that’s stopping you from achieving your final form isn’t a character flaw in yourself; rather, it’s a problem with society — and human nature — as a whole. Translation? It’s not your fault that you’ve accomplished nothing except eat more taquitos than you breathlessly promised yourself you would. Hear that, mom?
Here are some of the most common social phenomena you can blame for preventing you from crushing your goals.
Crab Mentality
Crab mentality describes the tendency for groups to hold people back from achieving individual success. The term comes from the idea that if you put a bunch of crabs in a bucket each crab will try to escape individually and in doing so they will pull down the other crabs that are also trying to escape. It’s the basic idea of, “If I can’t do it, neither can you”.
Say your younger sister steals your passport to prevent you from backpacking through South America and doing Ayahuasca in Peru because she works at Cinnabon and could never afford a trip like that or handle the cosmic responsibility of total enlightenment — that’s crab mentality.
Tall Poppy Syndrome
Tall Poppy Syndrome is similar to crab mentality, but it focuses more on the people who have managed to achieve success and have figuratively escaped the “bucket.” Basically it’s the tendency for people to resent people that are successful or in positions of power, or to cut them down like a person would cut down the tallest poppys in a garden first (you know, like if you were growing a huge field of poppies to make opium or artisanal organic bagels).
Tall Poppy Syndrome is extremely common in the modern workplace and a huge factor in causing inter-office rifts. People love to resent their boss and act like they’re a sadistic tyrant who derives immense pleasure from having them re-organize spreadsheets, when in reality they’re just trying to do their job, and to do that they need you re-organize those damn spreadsheets.
Sure, some bosses are dicks and some co-workers that get promoted don’t deserve it, but watch out for the tendency to resent everyone that is ahead you career-wise. It makes you seem like vengeful asshole and that is definitely taken into account when promotions roll around.
Impostor Syndrome
Unless you are complete and unrepentant raging narcissist, you will, at some point in your life, feel like a phony and fear being exposed for it. Impostor Syndrome describes just that — a constant sense of dread that, at any second, everyone will realize that you aren’t nearly as talented or qualified as you put off.
After working for years to achieve your goals, finally achieving them is something a lot of people aren’t mentally prepared for. This can cause them to doubt their own qualifications and success. Problems arise when people obsess over this feeling.
If you’re constantly worried about being exposed for a fraud and people recognizing how much suck at your job, then you’re more likely to actually mess up and unintentionally self-sabotage your own success. Then, you’ve effectively fulfilled your anxieties of being unqualified.
So … don’t do that. You deserve to succeed.
Jonah Complex
Jonah Complex is similar to Impostor Syndrome, but with Jonah Complex, people are so afraid of success that it prevents them from ever trying to achieve it the first place. It would be like if you dreamed of playing in the NFL as a kid, but you never wanted to play football because you were afraid of being the next Tom Brady and impressing everyone with how awesome you are. It’s ridiculous.
Jonah complex is named after some dude in the bible that ran away from his destiny because he was an uber-wimp.
Don’t be like Jonah. Unless of course your name is Jonah. Then you should keep your name, but don’t run from your potential like “bible Jonah” did.
Jonah Complex is common in people who tend to think going after your dreams is arrogant or selfish. In reality having a goal and working to achieve it is neither arrogant nor selfish, it’s badass and fulfilling.
Law of Jante
Law of Jante is a term applied to the tendency for groups to hate on people that don’t conform to established group norms. Outsiders who are unique or don’t adhere to perceived standards are labeled as outcasts and excluded from the group.
This kind of behavior is all too common in gossipy shitholes like small towns and high schools. In these tight-knit social settings, gossip spreads fast and the threat of being the topic of it dissuades anyone from acting outside the norm. This fosters a pattern of groupthink that stifles individuals from being themselves and achieving their own goals. Which is super duper lame.
The Law of Jante explains why there were no goths in your high school that wore Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops. If one of those “goths” regularly wore a sweet Hawaiian shirt to school they would have been labeled a poser and excluded for being stuck on island time and no self-loathing goth would want that. So, they wore black on black on black to maintain the status quo and remain in the group. At least black was a pretty cool color to be stuck wearing.
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