A lot of people who are confident, if you look at their life it was filled with friendships, family connections and receiving validation. Stable shelter and safety. They think they’re superior and are treated as such, but I think it’s often just that their circumstances are better, so it’s easy for them to be confident and appear strong – there’s a lack of hardship and an abundance of the resources humans need (food, water, shelter, safety, freedom, human connection).
I recently experienced sleeping on the streets for a month, and that shit was pretty easy for me to handle (props to food charities too). My third day a worker at a homelessness place told me “this’ll probably be the most stressful thing you’ve gone through” and I said “yeh maybe”, but it turned out to be nowhere near true, for me. Yet I wouldn’t be considered strong. But I think if you took a lot of strong people and chucked them on the street, they’d struggle much more or even off themselves. Same thing if you take a popular, confident person and make them have no friends – my best friend was always quite unpopular, whereas his brother was popular and more confident. His brother got bullied a little and lost some of his popularity (but still had a group of friends) and got majorly depressed and tried to suicide and became very unconfident, despite still being more popular than my friend.
Comments
Please remember what subreddit you are in, this is unpopular opinion. We want civil and unpopular takes and discussion. Any uncivil and ToS violating comments will be removed and subject to a ban. Have a nice day!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
I agree with this in theory, but what I disagree with is “I was homeless and it wasn’t so bad so people complaining about how hard it is must be weak” is not the takeaway you should have.
Whatever helps you to sleep better at night. My advice though is focus on yourself, don’t mind others whether they are strong or weak, rich or poor, good looking or not, it’s none of your business.
Actually mostly agree. I don’t know what your point about someone being popular has to do with anything tho.
Having it rough doesn’t necessarily make you strong either. People who didn’t grow up privileged may see themselves as street smart and strong, but then you try getting them to do Excel and they’re not so tough now, are they?
Most people don’t get tested on their character. Tons of dudes can say “I’d never cheat I’m so loyal” only because they never had a chance in the first place and would if they could.
You do see from all kinds of people a second a bit of adversity is placed on them out comes the excuses instead of just getting on with it.
I don’t even mean anything serious, could be as simple as them forgetting to do something which leads to an annoyance at best.
I guess your struggles didn’t teach you much self awareness?
There are a lot if strong and confident people, but they are usually not the ones aggressively promoting themselves as those.
?? define strong
There’s more factors at play. I think this is too wide of a statement to make.
There are a lot of assumptions being made: people with good upbringings think they’re superior, are treated as such, you wouldn’t be considered strong because you were homeless, “strong” people would struggle on the streets, etc.
My dad drove taxi and my mom cleaned houses. That provided food and stable shelter. I had friends, some validation, etc. I am not the picture you’re painting. I know you said “a lot of people”, so maybe I’m the rare exception, but I don’t think so.
At least for me, I largely agree with the realm of your post. But I think a ton of people do too. There’s a difference between confidence and arrogance. That’s about it.
Alright
Its very human to suffer. Its all just part of the tragic comedy we call life.
You could almost call it a sick joke…
I’m not sure of how many they are, in percentages, but it’s certainly a type – people who are falsely confident because they’ve never really been challenged or humbled.
People talk a lot about how it is important for parents to make sure their children get support in whatever they do, so they don’t lose confidence – and fair enough, that’s important. But it is also important they also let their children and teenagers follow through on the stupid (but not harmful) ideas they occasionally have, so they get smacked with the downer of failure in a controlled manner and space, so they learn early how to stand up and go again, how to deal with failure.
I’ve seen a lot of brilliant folks I went to uni with crash and burn, because they breezed through education, through their legitimate talent and intelligence, and then got hit with failure and disillusionment for the first time as young adults in the work force, and they just didn’t know how to handle this.
Even the grand canyon is made by water. Under sufficient pressure even the strongest people can crack. Dosent mean they’re weak. Just because someone can crack dosent mean they’re weak.
A homeless person judging whether other people are popular or strong. You got bigger issues then slapping labels on people.
Growing up as a child blessed with friendships, family connections, receiving validation, stable shelter, and safety is what builds an emotionally strong adult though.
Now it’s different if they were like a rich kid, who was spoiled and had people kowtowing to them but never actually had a strong foundation of emotional support, so if there’s ever a crack they will crumble.
But if they’re not that but simply someone who had their basic needs met, both materially and emotionally, then that’s just a healthy person with a healthy network who knows where to turn if they have trouble.
By the way I doubt such well-raised people tend to believe they are better than others, it would be the spoiled rich kids who would believe that.
All this is not to say that someone who has something and loses it suddenly won’t struggle more, at least temporarily, than someone who never had that thing in the first place (per your example about losing friends). This post contains some common sense but then goes off the rails comparing things that aren’t the same. Being bullied and suddenly losing friends is different in many ways from just having had a smaller number of friends to begin with. I guess it was mainly the bullying he suffered from.
I will agree with this. Those who are praised for their self-control, discipline, focus, and other traditional virtues tend to be those who had enough social support and material comfort to cultivate those virtues.