3 Steps

I have read repeatedly that successful people take their destiny into their own hands and do not blame the World or their parents.

But correlation is not causality and there are a few flaws in using these factoids in place of actual wisdom.

The thread 'Maybe it isn't all your fault' was not intended to be a recipe for success or to explain how I think it might be possible to get one step up the ladder, as I know only too well that it is often impossible to do so.

Instead it was intended as a partial protection against feelings of failure and that slide known as 'depression'.

For example. My dad explained to me when I was 26 that by that age he owned a house and had two children and that I have to learn to stand on my own two legs.

That comment didn't help in any way but it did help to make me feel even more 'down'.

The statement about not blaming their parents is particularly banal as a successful person has pretty much by definition nothing really big to blame them for.

The most crucial step in my mind is the first, to not allow parents, girlfriends, boyfriends to tell you that you are no good because of your situation with regard to money or sanity.

Step 1 of accepting it isn't all your fault is because it is far safer to identify how much of it does actually come in from outside and to acknowledge, I'm not saying you have to become a Calvinist,

but that a lot is usually bad ideas fed in from the outside and the deteriorating economy for those of us near the bottom.

Instead I would congratulate anyone who reaches the magic 90% mark in identifying how much of what has gone wrong is not their fault, and suggest they take themselves out to dinner for that amazing achievement.

I'm not the only one saying this, there is plenty of research into both emotional and sexual abuse of children, and less extreme things such as if it was just bad advice, really bad advice as I've mentioned here, and being told a lot of stuff that isn't true, especially all of those put together, and that giant who feels he has the right to suddenly get angry at any time, maybe all adults look like giants at the time,

well here's famous words about curing broken adults:

But as I see it that's Step 1, to acknowledge there has been a disaster, that most of it isn't your fault, and to be able to move on.

The Titanic isn't going to get you to New York, think now of an alternative.

And that is also Step 1 in Christianity, to acknowledge the problem first, repent, and then to take the first steps forward.

Step 2 is to accept reality.

That sounds so obvious but most people don't take even that step.

And I don't even need to look beyond my own immediate relatives for examples.

One didn't know much about much of anything but instead of accepting that and deciding what to learn, she spent the next 40 years reading a newspaper so she knew everything about 'everything that mattered' and was always ready to answer the big questions if anyone asked her. She is amazingly boring.

In my case I'm pretty sure I've recovered 90% or more from my childhood trauma, and that's been a big struggle, almost entirely on my own with a bunch of great self help books, a professional psychiatrist I happen to know from work told me that my IQ was average or slightly above.

Many engineers I've met have had no interest in their subject or are just plain stupid, I'd guess average plus actual interest is good enough -

So now I'm ready for Step 3
To train to become an Engineer, so I'm going over to my electronics bench to start on just that