A little advice on life for anon,

[Continued from here X] What is our value in life? Who defines it? Can we improve ourselves alone? Do we take in all the criticism/advice from others?

You’re not alone,

I would bet that your parents, sister, teachers, all of them have experienced this, too. These are things we all deal with throughout life in different variations.

As I wrote under the cut, as introspective as he can be, I don’t think Lestat is necessarily the best at giving advice on this subject, and then, my own headcanon of him will vary from other Lestats. My Lestat doesn’t like to get down too deeply in emotional details.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not a psychologist, just another person trying to navigate my way through this life, so what works for me might not work for you. Different things work for different people. If you need professional help, please seek it!

These people in your life who make you feel inferior, maybe they’re not intentionally trying to be so crushing. They might not be aware that it’s hurtful. Or, you might need them to be more gentle with you than they are with others. People have different levels of sensitivity. You might want to level with your advisers, tell them specifically how you feel, and maybe you can find a way for them to help you w/o it hurting. It may or may not be possible.

Lestat tried to do this with his family when he was growing up but he was ignored or interrupted, when he wasn’t being beaten back for trying to improve himself. So much for having a caring family. I think this is why he writes his feelings out, bc you can’t be beaten, interrupted, or dismissed when you’re alone, writing a novel. Were they intentionally trying to crush his spirit? I don’t think so. I think he just wasn’t a big concern for them, they had given him a job to do and expected him to shut up and do it. Some families are unfortunately like that.

One thing that I learned that really helped me was realizing the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic validation. Extrinsic comes from outside of you (awards for talent, people agreeing with your ideas); intrinsic comes from inside (your own feelings of self-worth and self-esteem).

So Lestat’s family was shitty and wasn’t supportive of him. Well, he found passion in hunting and providing for his family anyway, he found love in the animals he kept that helped him hunt. He found love and joy in being at the monastery school or the theatre troupe. He was congratulated for his natural talent with acting, which is extrinsic, but he felt it when he was onstage, even aside from the applause: “I found a tongue for verses
and wit I’d never had in life.” Something bloomed inside him. 

You can nurture your own intrinsic well-being, you can validate your own opinions on things. I’ve found that this can lead to increased self-esteem and that confidence will help you achieve your extrinsic goals. Intrinsic satisfaction might be as simple as singing along to your fave music, and you’re hitting the notes and enjoying it so much that you don’t even realize how much time has passed. Like Nicki playing the violin. It’s called achieving Flow.

In positive psychology, flow, also known as the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does.

So I’ll address your concerns myself now, I just didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to do it through a fictional character.

– Dear Lestat, I feel like I’m never enough. 

It’s the first thing you said and one thing you might try is altering your perspective. I recommend the study of positive psychology:

“Those who practice positive psychology attempt psychological interventions that foster positive attitudes toward one’s subjective experiences, individual traits, and life events. The goal is to minimize pathological thoughts that may arise in a hopeless mindset, and to, instead, develop a sense of optimism toward life.”

– Not smart enough for my parents, 

How are they defining “smart”? There’s so many kinds of intelligence! Are they just looking at grades? Someone who may not be good at science might be gifted in creative writing, and we need both kinds of people in this world. Maybe your parents want you to be something you’re not interested in, so I would talk with them about their expectations. 

What you are now and what you’re interested in now can change. There are so many stories of people changing careers in their lives in surprising ways, here’s one example:

Shih attended Johns Hopkins University, followed by medical school at George Washington University, then practiced for eight years as an obstetrician/gynecologist before realizing that baking, not medicine, was her calling.

“Everyone would say, ‘You’re a doctor; it must be so great to be able to save lives,’” she says. “But I felt like I was just pushing papers and feeling pressure to see more patients in less time. It was very draining. It just wasn’t fun anymore.” – Drained doctor leaves patients for pastries.

– not good enough of a sister, 

What defines a good sister? I know I can improve my relationship with several family members, one of whom I have major trust issues with, but that’s a two-way street. She has to want to improve our relationship, too. 

– my work is not nice enough for my teachers, 

“Nice enough,” is that about art, then? I had an art teacher who, let’s just say, we had terrible chemistry! I wanted to paint Dante’s Inferno kind of things and she wanted me to do more pleasant artwork. Flowers! We reconciled eventually but you know, teachers are people, too, and you might not be able to please them all. 

There are good and bad teachers out there, and teachers you just might not have good chemistry with whether they are good or bad. 

– I’m not thin enough, not beautiful enough. 

(As much as Lestat reminds us how gorgeous he is, I would suggest he himself doesn’t always feel so beautiful.*)

This “thin = beautiful” thing perturbs me, I’ve suffered under this delusion at various times over the years. I try not to reblog aesthetic posts perpetuating it. I feel like this “thin = beautiful” thing was perpetuated partly by:

• Fashion designers – Their clothes should stand out, not the person wearing them, apparently, so they might prefer someone that is closer to the dimensions of a coat hanger than a person with shapes, 
• Fashion designers – It’s always easier to take a dress seam IN than LET IT OUT. So I think enough last-minute failures in designs needing to be taken in have gradually made runway models slimmer and slimmer to the point of ludicrously teensy skeleton-girls *rolls eyes*
• Insecure men – who are intimidated by women, and would prefer to see women as more fragile so that the men can feel more masculine in comparison.
• Insecure men – who are intimidated by women, and want women to consider themselves a second-class citizen who has to EARN affection by living in physical denial.

In some societies, bigger is beautiful! An “unhealthy” weight by one society’s standards during one time period is desirable in others: [X] 

^Personally, I prefer Tiziano’s “Venere di Urbino” in its original form (left), which is clearly the point Italian artist/actress Anna Utopia Giordano was making when she ‘shopped a whole bunch of these classical paintings ;D

One of my favorite posts about this says, “I wish that people viewed themselves as they viewed flowers.”

^X by @sandflakedraws

For more on this, I have a tag for advice #on beauty.

– Even in things I really put effort into. 

Putting in effort alone sometimes doesn’t achieve our goals, or the effort needs to be different. Sometimes we take 2 steps back and 1 step forward in our journey to improve. 

I lost 30 lbs actually, for health reasons, and my weight loss path? Not a smooth linear line! Jagged as a mountain range. There were weeks when I fell off the wagon, and had to climb up again. It took me over a year. There was more than one point where I had to start all over again. My effort was not consistent throughout. Even when it was for weeks at a time, I would hit plateaus and not make any improvement even though I was doing everything right! My Weight Watchers leader and fellow members told me that they had experienced that, too. I was relieved to hear that from them, that it was normal. The human body is organic and does not necessarily respond as you think it should to specific stimulus. Same thing with life, it’s organic. 

– Do you have any advice for a desperate mortal?

These are questions that have come up for me and others at various times in life, and will continue to come up. I’ve given you some food for thought in this post, but most importantly, know that you are not alone. We can share our own experiences, as I have in this post, we can learn how to live with these questions and try to address them individually at different times in our lives.

Positive psychology has helped me immensely, but that might not work for you. If you need professional help, seek it! *hugs*

*Re: Lestat not really believing he’s so gorgeous: In my reading of VC, it seems like Lestat has struggled with not feeling good/attractive/skilled/etc. enough throughout his life and unlife. You could say, “Well, the one thing he feels totally enough about is in his physical appearance!”, but even then, I feel like it’s something of a “the lady doth protest too much”; he often reminds us how attractive he is (to the point that you sort of question if he himself really believes it?) and how fashionable he is since he grew up in poverty and has to make up for it now for eternity, but he also reveals these moments of body horror when he’s confronted with his own reflection and how much vampirism changes him through the series. So it seems like he’s insecure even in his own appearance.