Postby My pseudonym is Ix » 20 Aug 2016, 02:50
Rytel,
Way back when he was first developing person-centred therapy, Carl Rogers spent a lot of time expounding upon the subject of a person's locus of evaluation, a concept he pretty much invented. The idea is this: a locus of evaluation is the sum total of where a persons evaluation and opinion of themselves come from, and can be internal or external to varying degrees. Those with a strong external locus of evaluation tend to find their self-worth is very much at the whim of those around those around them, which tends to make it a fairly fragile beast. I mean, even the best of friends don't compliment one another constantly, despite what various bits of pop culture exposure may have lead you to believe. People with a strong internal locus of evaluation basically develop their own standards against which to judge themselves, and their opinion of themselves is borne primarily from within rather than without.
But here's the real rub- a locus of evaluation is not innate or 'built-in', it is learned and can be altered surprisingly easily. It's quite difficult to do it consciously, and really it's a state of mind thing as much as anything else; if one is able to convince the logical part of one's brain that, essentially, "my own opinion of myself matters way, way more than anyone else's ever could", then sooner or later the less rational mind will start to accept it as gospel too (emotions are suggestible like that).
Your most recent post smacks of someone hovering towards the 'external' end of middle on the spectrum. You are proud of your own achievements and where you've got to, and that you're able to feel that suggests a solid element of internal evaluation. This is backed up by your final paragraph where you talk about, essentially, being able to live up to your own ideas regarding what 'good' means- although these ideas might not be particularly healthy, they do at least appear to be yours to a greater or lesser extent. This is something I struggle with- I have heavily internalised my locus of evaluation over the last few years, but my standards are often too unrelenting and arbitrary to be entirely helpful. This is rather a separate issue, but it is at least mine to deal with.
Back to you. The key evidence for an externalised locus of evaluation in your case seems to come from your third paragraph, where you say that despite your own self-admitted pride in your achievements, "none of that matters". You are willingly disregarding much of your own self-opinion because it doesn't fit with what the world appears to be telling you (at least through the lens of your own perception, which is *always* a clouded one), and in doing so you are letting it be a major source of your ill-feeling about yourself.
And yes, the world does pretty much only care about results. Results are what shape history, results are what get written down in the books- unfortunately, shit happens on that one. But here's the rub- that does not have to matter to you that much. It's like the old cliche of someone giving up a well-paid city job to go and raise their kids; from the perspective of "the world" they have ceased to be important in shaping the path of whichever field they were in, but that doesn't matter. They get to help raise a family and watch their children grow, and from their perspective that's worth more than any amount of validation from the outside world.
You don't have to care about what the world thinks too much. Life is not an exam.
"Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not
it after all."
