Do you congratulate yourself?

[Puffi]

Do you acknowledge yourself as the cause of your successes in life? Have you overcome something in your life which you think was mostly/only due to your efforts, not external factors? Do you have an internal locus of control?

I don't believe in an internal locus of control and am what you could call a hard determinist. I never congratulate myself for anything. I've always found an external reason for everything. I believe I have no control over my mind, yet I'm responsible for my actions because my mind is what defines who I am.

Oh and personally, I think people with high internal locus of control are really annoying. ;)

[TruorTupnm]

Um, yes? I make a decison, I follow through, I affect my life, I adapt to change. But then, I am not espeically absolute about my answer. This question is the first thing to get me to define this bit of myself? Lots of luck was involved in stuff, I am certain. I have overcome all kinds of stuff, sometimes helped by luck, other humans, or nature or something :huh: but i would call my own decisions the most useful part, why not? Don't most have what you call an internal locus of control? If not, wouldn't that make them, "Whee! I have no goals and shall relocate to wherever the planet spins me!" or, "Oh, I don't care. Whatever anyone else thinks is best. I have no opinion." Terrifying.

Oh. I just remembered the title of the thread. No, I don't congratulate myself. It's more of a, "Goal. Get to it, dude. Okay, got it. Done. Next goal?"

[niffer]

Of course. It is easy to recognize when something happens because of your efforts (or non-efforts), and when something is not. At least for me. Because whenever I decide to make a change in the way I act or do something, the effort it takes becomes an experience ingrained in my memory.

[Puffi]

Your opinions are beyond your control. You can't choose what you believe, want, or even think about. Don't think about a dog! Of course you will when I say that. That's how people work.

Say you're depressed, and then one day you decide "damn, I have to get out of this slump, go out and be happy again!" And then you do. And it works. Now what exactly made you do that at that exact point in time? Something sparked that action. If there's no external spark for that then why would you spend weeks, months, years being depressed and then decide it's enough? Did your neurons just naturally wither away in time to bring forth this epiphany? I doubt it. More influential was new stimuli.

This doesn't mean that having a more internal locus of control is somehow irrational. It's a philosophical issue. However it's annoying when people brag about their accomplishments and take all the credit for them. These people need to look around more because there's always something that helped them. To find that something is always all down to luck!

Being a hard determinist is just a philosophical view on free will and cognition. It doesn't need to affect behavior in any way. Like I said I take responsibility for what I do. Do I think it's my moral responsibility to do so? No. It's like asking a rock if it was immoral to fall on someone's head.

I go wherever the world spins me, and so do you. If you decide to go the other way, that is the way. ;)

[niffer]

That's true that there should be some external spark for you to take action. However, you are the one that took the action. You could have chosen not to take action- actions are different from thoughts and opinions. If the outcome of not taking action is bad, then it was equally up to you as it would have been if you did take action, and got to enjoy the fruits of this effort. Of course it will be annoying when people take all the credit for their accomplishments and brag all the time. I'm pretty sure most people don't take it so far as to make it annoying to others though.

[stasis]

Do you acknowledge yourself as the cause of your successes in life?
No. But only because my "successes" can never be commensurate with my insane and incessantly receding self-standards, not because I don't think personal agency is meaningful. Otherwise, I think I would take any opportunity to congratulate myself. I imagine it feels good.

[Paul V]

Yes. Everything I accomplish is the consequence of effort and struggle against adversity. I do not allow others to help me, unless there is no possible way I can manage alone. And even in that case, it will not be a success but a failure, since I couldn't do it by myself.

[rwyatt365]

Do I congratulate myself for accomplishments? No – once done, it's time to move on to the next thing, no need to gloat. I do acknowledge that my accomplishments are my own and not the result of some outside agency. What I have decided to do, and have completed successfully on my own is a result of my actions alone.

Your opinions are beyond your control. You can't choose what you believe, want, or even think about. Don't think about a dog! Of course you will when I say that. That's how people work.

Say you're depressed, and then one day you decide "damn, I have to get out of this slump, go out and be happy again!" And then you do. And it works. Now what exactly made you do that at that exact point in time? Something sparked that action. If there's no external spark for that then why would you spend weeks, months, years being depressed and then decide it's enough? Did your neurons just naturally wither away in time to bring forth this epiphany? I doubt it. More influential was new stimuli.
Belief and thought are two different things. Yes, you may say, "Don’t think of a dog", and my mind might immediately picture a dog – that is thought. However, any feelings, prejudices, etc… I might have towards dogs is part of my belief-system and is not affected by that external influence (your statement). So, my beliefs and opinions are well within my control whereas the thought processes evoked by external forces may not be entirely within my control.

This doesn't mean that having a more internal locus of control is somehow irrational. It's a philosophical issue. However it's annoying when people brag about their accomplishments and take all the credit for them. These people need to look around more because there's always something that helped them. To find that something is always all down to luck!
I also find it annoying for people to brag about their accomplishments, but only because I find the whole concept of bragging an annoyance. To me, your accomplishments should speak for themselves – if they are accomplishments, then they don't need announcements.

[The Rose]

I had to learn to "congratulate myself".
I am the first one to criticize myself if I mess up.
When I started working on my poor self-image, the books wanted me to "make a list of all my accomplishments".
But as a perfectionist, and because of other parts of my personality, nothing I ever did was BIG enough or IMPORTANT enough or PERFECT enough to be considered an accomplishment.
Therefore, I was a great big loser.

I had to learn to accept my smaller efforts and my smaller victories and to appreciate myself for the work that I put into them.

I don't tell anyone else about it, but it's important to my own self-image that I realize that I do contribute something of value to my home and the world in general.

Yes. Everything I accomplish is the consequence of effort and struggle against adversity. I do not allow others to help me, unless there is no possible way I can manage alone. And even in that case, it will not be a success but a failure, since I couldn't do it by myself.Oh man! Do I relate to that! :irked: :cry:

It's hard being an INTJ!

[Max T]

I don't congratulate myself upon reaching a goal- just move to the next as rwyatt365 says.

And as Paul V and Rose, I'm rubbish at seeking help from others. This can occasionally be a major weakness of INTJs. Teams achieve big things- we can fail to appreciate synergy.

I do have very internalised Locus of Control (i.e. belief that you can control your own destiny) because I consider it central to:
a. true happiness ('self-actualisation'), as you eventually live according to own terms and
b. achievement, as it flattens the general apathy stemming from allowing yourself to be pushed by other forces.

Conversely, Puffi could equally achieve happiness by coming to terms with the cards they have been dealt in life, and equally gain a sense of achievement by helping others/teams reach their own destiny.

But... if you don't have a plan, you're part of someone elses.

[Puffi]

Belief and thought are two different things. Yes, you may say, "Don’t think of a dog", and my mind might immediately picture a dog – that is thought. However, any feelings, prejudices, etc… I might have towards dogs is part of my belief-system and is not affected by that external influence (your statement). So, my beliefs and opinions are well within my control whereas the thought processes evoked by external forces may not be entirely within my control.

Thinking about something will access your belief systems too. It could be conscious or not. Your belief systems on the other hand can be manipulated. Think propaganda, persuasion, brain washing... Your belief systems are in "your" control, but "you" aren't in control of yourself so that's irrelevant. There is an outside agent: your culture.

I can achieve happiness just like anyone else, I just don't think I have a say in it.

[Paul V]

Thinking about something will access your belief systems too. It could be conscious or not. Your belief systems on the other hand can be manipulated. Think propaganda, persuasion, brain washing... Your belief systems are in "your" control, but "you" aren't in control of yourself so that's irrelevant. There is an outside agent: your culture.

I can achieve happiness just like anyone else, I just don't think I have a say in it.

I disagree completely. This is like the old game of "You'll do everything I say", you say "No", then the other person starts giving you orders you are already doing, like "Breathe" or "Live", and no matter how hard you try not to obey they orders, you always end up obeying them. This can drive you crazy. However, there's only one solution: You do what you want and completely disregard their commands.

Of course, technically, you'll end up doing everything they'll say, but the objective here is not letting them get to you. Even if you're happy the exact same way your society suggests, so what? You're doing it because that's what you want, not what others tell you to do. In the end, it doesn't matter what others think of you, but what you think. I'd hate myself if I thought I didn't have a say in achieving my own happiness. And then, I would simply decide that's not true, and would begin to live my life the way I wanted it to be.

[OneBadMother]

I don't exactly congratulate myself so much as think, "Whew, I did pretty well." That makes me relatively happy for about ten minutes or so, after which I return to my natural state of neutrality.

[TruorTupnm]

Hm. I wasn't planning on replying again, since it looks like others beat me to decent responses. I was just trying to go up there to fix a spelling error, but I accidentally hit the Quote button and had to make this post. Looks like we can't delete posts. Or go back and edit posts after a certain amount of time. oh well.

Towards people telling me not to think of a dog or some such ploy, I have trained myself not to fall for that. I just say, "Okay," and move on.

Anyways, to the Puffi person's (a silly image comes to brain) point about culture controlling people: Some people reject the culture that raised them. But then, your point seems more to be that you could always come up with something that seems to be controlling someone. Sure, you could come up with plenty of examples of influences on decisions, but they are merely influences and not insurmountable. Sure, it seems likely that someone bogged down by a large amount of influences would be swayed by something, but Yay for clarity of mind and detachment from all that is useless, yes? I gots plenty of that.

[rwyatt365]

Thinking about something will access your belief systems too. It could be conscious or not. Your belief systems on the other hand can be manipulated. Think propaganda, persuasion, brain washing... Your belief systems are in "your" control, but "you" aren't in control of yourself so that's irrelevant. There is an outside agent: your culture.

I can achieve happiness just like anyone else, I just don't think I have a say in it.
Propaganda is just political "advertising" meant to promote a particular agenda. I can (and do) choose to accept it, or not. Persuasion is just making an argument for, or against, something. I use my rational mind and deductive reasoning to determine whether that argument is reasonable and valid, and again choose to accept or reject it. Brain washing is a manipulative technique for inserting or removing thoughts in another person's mind. I may or may not be able to resist this and so it is more insidious than the others, in that my choice in the matter is overridden.

Influence and manipulation are one thing and leaders, advertisers, and cultural influences all take advantage of the power to alter the beliefs of populations. However, it is quite a leap to say that "I" am not in control of "myself". Of course, your deterministic viewpoint would have to accept that as true but I don't accept that viewpoint as being true. So I will have to agree to diagree and furthermore state that - to me - I am in control of my beliefs (no matter how susceptible to manipulation) and so my argument is entirely relevant.

[ThrowerMatt]

I tend to get pretty excited when I am able to finally solve a large problem, and I congratulate myself accordingly.

[Myrak]

I do congratulate myself, makes me feel good for however long and adds a highlight to my otherwise dreary day. I'm always beating myself up for what goes wrong, its nice to feel good for something that goes right. :)

[dobbin]

If I set myself a goal then I know that I will acheive it, no matter what. Therefore if I meet a goal, there's no point in congratualting myself.

For me there's no point in setting unreasonable expectations.

[BadMojo]

I congratulate or berate myself on a daily basis.

[quentin]

As a creative type, if I spend some time creating something, and get around to completing it, there's that moment after you've finally laid down the last word in a story or poem (or last brushstroke in a painting, whatever it is you do), and you step back and say to yourself, "Wow. Look at that. I did that. Out of nothing I created something totally new. I'm not all that bad at it, either. In fact I'm pretty good. No - I'm really good." There are few sensations in life that give me such as 'high' of inner satisfaction.

[Zilal]

I've gotten better about it... I occasionally applaud my successes for a couple seconds now... I had a bad habit for a long time of only being critical of myself, and it totally tainted my world view.

[DeadSpace]

i do congratulate myself, though i don't pause to do so...usually already picking apart how i might have done things better :\

[Tokey41]

I don't... I mean what do you do to congratulate yourself? Celebrate? I prefer to move on to the next task and keep going until I am absolutely out of energy and then relax. The fact that I accomplished the goal is the congratulations in itself. The praising can come from other people.

[ushop]

Part of congratulating myself is knowing that I see mistakes in my work that other people don't see/care about. It's reassuring to know that I can make improvements.

[richirare]

I know that everything I have achieved in life has to do with my my determination and nothing else. Everyone one is responsible of oneself is my moto.

[MixISTJandINTJ]

No, I just keep on working and working. Congratulations will come later

[aexis]

Like most of the other people who replied to this thread, I don't see the point in congratulating myself on something I could obviously do anyway. If I found something difficult to do, I'd most likely just keep persevering at it until I either fixed my problem, or found another way of dealing with it. One way or another it was going to get solved.

If I get through a particularly trying ordeal, I might reward myself with something later on, but that's to take the edge of what was obviously a rather uncomfortable day and cheer me up, and not because I feel like I should, for some reason, be congratulated.

Congratulations seems to me to be very self-centric and not a huge step away from self-pity. Rewarding yourself is appropriate, though. I guess you could argue for rewarding yourself with congratulations, but I don't think that would be very healthy.