Are You Dumb?: Yes You are, But so is Everyone Else, #4

By Jay Lambert

Mistakes are a part of being human and it's a mistake to condemn ourselves for coming up short.The world is filled with tales of people who have failed, yet these same people are individuals who we both know and associate with success. The same choice can be ours.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grumpy Grampa Publishing
• Release date: Aug 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201043490

Book preview

Introduction

These books, provide the cognitive leap that can cure that wildly destructive belief of I’m not smart enough to try.  Instead, you can embrace your imperfections, and recognize them for how they connect us all. Our sense of being inferior derives from assuming that we alone, have a private corner on inadequacy. We don’t.

Here, you will find a path that removes the fear from the inner voice, that says, we are less intelligent and capable. Listen. For every one of us, what we know, is dwarfed by what we do not know. This, however, is not the problem. It’s the limiting belief that we aren’t qualified to compete because of our intellectual deficit and our inability to change. You now know this is incorrect. Instead, we have infinitely wider opportunities to live more gratifying lives. We just have to act.

This is the reason why the right title for these books are: Are You Dumb? Yes, You Are, But So Is Everyone Else. Welcome to Book #4.

I

Main Body

1

Failure-Phobia and the Four-Word Curse

Hey, look at that guy.

My younger brother and I were playing in the front yard when we observed a person walking on the opposite side of the street. What caught our attention was his unusual gait. As he walked, one side of his body appeared rigid, while his other side seemed to be responsible for most of his forward progression. We also noticed his arm on the stiff side remained locked at the elbow as it vigorously swung in unison with the opposing leg, a clear counterbalance that appeared to help maintain his precarious equilibrium.

This most unusual display of movement was something I had never seen in all eight years of my life. Then, I had a brilliant idea. If I mimicked his walk, it would be hilariously funny. Laughing, I began walking back and forth in our front yard, imitating this stranger’s style of locomotion. Behind me was my little brother doing his best to equal his big brother’s funny walk.

Unknown to us, our mother was looking out the kitchen window. She also saw the person we mimicked and, in one of her finer moments, quickly came to the back door.

Come here right now!

Her tone conveyed impending trouble, and I already knew what was coming:

Shame on you! Do you think he walks like that on purpose? Well, do you?

This was my first experience as a student of sensitivity training, and I understood I was wrong and my teacher was right. I’m sorry, Mom. Never again did I mimic the disabled.

All of us possess the inborn ability to be exceptionally stupid, ignorant, insensitive, and blind to others’ feelings. These darker occasions are not in and of themselves sufficient for permanent self-condemnation. We can allow these slips as evidence we are not deities. These banana-peel moments should not be taken as reasons to undermine our egos with an internal tirade of trash-talking. Instead, recognize these as opportunities to remind ourselves of our fallibility without an accompanying depreciation of our core selves.

All of us are flawed. Speaking honestly of my personal ability in achieving lapses of good sense, I have always had this skill, and I still have moments of monumental mess-ups. To list my lifetime collection of incompetencies would require writing volumes. Our dilemma is the detrimental belief that others aren’t guilty of making these same stupid mistakes. We think others are smarter, more capable, and talented. This flawed reasoning comes from our childhood.

Surrounded by giants

Surrounded by giants.

Back when we were little people, surrounded by giants, we assumed these all-powerful guardians always did the right thing, always knew better, and always held the answer to every question. Allied with our belief in superheroes such as Father Christmas and his Flying Reindeer, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, we were programmed to accept without question everything our parents taught. As the years passed by and we grew older, we were disappointed to learn that reality was reindeer can’t fly, and our parents’ answers could be incomplete, exaggerated, or incorrect.

Mom and Me

Mom and Me

Whether these past mentors were our parents, teachers, or clergy, often these grownups were nothing more than older kids in bigger bodies. They had their own struggles with unanswered questions, problems without solutions, and fears of failure.

Nevertheless, we relied on them to keep us safe and watched quietly to see what they thought about us. Thus, we saw ourselves from the frequently distorted reflections represented by how our parents would accept or reject our actions. Like the trick mirrors at the fair, these metaphorical mirrors were sometimes accurate and, other times a lie. While these reflections revealed both good and bad, somehow it was the bad that had the adhesion of Velcro, while the good slipped away as if tarred with Teflon.

The harsh criticism we received from our parents and teachers can stay with us for decades–sometimes to our graves. This is the