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Mental health is tricky because its affects can be so complex depending on factors like personality, genetics, or even other mental health conditions. Something

Mental health is tricky because its affects can be so complex depending on factors like personality, genetics, or even other mental health conditions. Something that fuels one person’s drive could incapacitate another, under neither of their own doing. I think people can have strategies for turning challenges and disabilities into assets, but again it takes the right set of circumstances for that individual. It takes strength to know when your specific circumstances aren’t lining up, and how to reach out for help (community, therapy, medication). And for some people, that condition may switch someday to enabling success rather than hindering. But to the point of the linked article, it talks about how maybe not needing to strive for overwhelming success in the first place leads to better overall life. How anxiety likely can drive you either up or down, but contentness is maybe in the middle somewhere. I’ve had this thought before. Robert Herjavec has mentioned on Shark Tank how he “sleeps 4 hours a night because he’s always working”… maybe that’s just how he wants to be seen, but why does he even feel the need to project that image? He must have absurd anxiety, because if not, he would’ve slowed down and been happy with what he has ages ago.

Apocryphon 4y ago
> He must have absurd anxiety, because if not, he would’ve slowed down and been happy with what he has ages ago. Maybe ambition can create an anxiety if its own. Those who are at the top of their game in the corporate world, in athletics, the arts and entertainment, etc. can be subjected to hyper-competitive environments where they feel the need to continuously deliver, both extrinsically and intrinsically. Maybe they didn’t “have anxiety” prior to it, but they had the personality to thrive within the same sort of uncertain stressful situations.
kayodelycaon 4y ago
I want to poke at one thing you said, because it’s relevant to how I see the article. :) > He must have absurd anxiety… If the author of the article had said this, I would read it as : “The only way I imagine behaving like he does is to have absurd anxiety.” I think this is the trap the article falls into. Many times we lack the information or frame of reference to understand the motivations of other people. When that happens, we tend to use our own experience and motivations instead. Something I think about a lot when reading these articles because one of the “benefits” of being bipolar is having a very large frame of reference in regards to patterns of thought and emotional extremes.

Apocryphon 4y ago

> He must have absurd anxiety, because if not, he would’ve slowed down and been happy with what he has ages ago. Maybe ambition can create an anxiety if its own. Those who are at the top of their game in the corporate world, in athletics, the arts and entertainment, etc. can be subjected to hyper-competitive environments where they feel the need to continuously deliver, both extrinsically and intrinsically. Maybe they didn’t “have anxiety” prior to it, but they had the personality to thrive within the same sort of uncertain stressful situations.

kayodelycaon 4y ago

I want to poke at one thing you said, because it’s relevant to how I see the article. :) > He must have absurd anxiety… If the author of the article had said this, I would read it as : “The only way I imagine behaving like he does is to have absurd anxiety.” I think this is the trap the article falls into. Many times we lack the information or frame of reference to understand the motivations of other people. When that happens, we tend to use our own experience and motivations instead. Something I think about a lot when reading these articles because one of the “benefits” of being bipolar is having a very large frame of reference in regards to patterns of thought and emotional extremes.