What areas in your life do you seem to fail in? What can be done to change that?

Sleep. I have tried everything to improve my ability to sleep in and the only time I get more than 5 hours sleep is when I am camping in a tent. Must be the fresh air! ;)

I am a failure at relationships. Or maybe you could say that I am a great success at destroying relationships. Although there is one that I have, so far, even after twenty some odd years, not managed to destroy. I have no idea why not, and I have no idea how to change this. Friends, lovers, family, whatever. The only one who sticks around is my wife. God knows why. I don’t treat her very well.

The inability to pay people compliments they deserve. It just won’t come out with close friends and family but with strangers and acquaintances it does. I maybe evil that way.

When I am given a gift, I am terrible at expressing my appreciation.
Truth is I am overwhelmed by such acts, and just don’t know what to say!

Too many things.

I don’t know if it’s just a lack of confidence bringing me down, or if I just actually suck this bad. I’m sure some more confidence would help me to suck less at many of these things.

Academically, I am very smart but only in my “niche” strengths, which seem to be limited to anything I can do on a piece of paper with nobody watching me. Want me to do a complex physics problem? Sure, no problem, but don’t you dare stare over my shoulder, and if you upgrade it to a physics lab, I’m a useless mess. Don’t ask me why. I’m only “blackboard” smart, which is the most useless form of smart in existence.

Relatedly, I can’t drive. I’m so nervous about it, and there’s something about my motor skills that just makes them go to shit when I’m nervous. It’s the same problem I have with my physics labs. I really wish I could master this basic life skill; I’m not sure how I plan to navigate the rest of my life without it.

I’m also extremely socially awkward. I can’t keep a conversation going and I feel very uninteresting when I compare myself with other people. I guess I’m getting a little better with this though.

There are just so many basic things that I suck at, it makes me feel like a freak.

@Mariah For some reason I wanted to ask you what if you started writing? Anything creative like short stories or poems about all sorts of fictional characters you can conjure up in your mind and just let go. I think it’s a good way of maybe finding strengths you may not have discovered yet from within you. Not sure this makes sense to you but there it is.

I can’t finish anything. Also, I lose momentum with a lot of my projects. I’ve started school so many times and left before the end of the semester. I don’t feel challenged enough and it seems my life always gets in the way. It seems that even once I left high school and started college I couldn’t finish it. I love school and always loved to learn, but the college environment wasn’t for me for some reason.

Also I can never seem to find my niche job wise. I seem to go from wanting to be one thing to another and start school for it, then lose interest. All I know is that I’m happiest when with animals, I just can’t go to school for 2 years due to family and financial issues.

Everything…I am constantly struggling to get through this life alive.

I’m failing at life in general, I’m not selective, my failure knows no bounds.

@filmfann I know what you mean. Most people find it easier to give than to receive. But there is a way to get over it: whatever the gift is, large or small, personal or not (say, a bonus from the corporation) – remember: the size and value are perceived differently by you and the giver. Don’t assume anything about it – just be polite. Don’t start reading into it, giving it a life of its own and over-analyzing it – just be polite. Just say thank you. It’s that simple.

Now if you want to, in the privacy of your home, think about it… did I deserve it – what do I owe in exchange – how does it affect our relationship – all that crap that our minds go through.

But when you get the gift itself, no matter what it is, just say thank you. It’s the polite, correct thing to do.

@zen I always look at the gift, and wonder if this is really what they think I like… if this is really the kind of thing I represent to them. I always ask people not to give me gifts for Christmas, birthdays, and the like, because I can’t deal with it.

@filmfann send them my way, I love gifts.

Sweet holy moly, for quite some time, lately more than ever, expressing or conveying logic to whom I am having a conversation with. It is like I am thinking billiards and they are thinking bowling. Most issues or subject are black and white, but so many people want to inject a bunch of Gray in there. The subjects that are neither black nor white have no real right or wrong; it comes down to personal taste, like pillows and beds, what is too soft to one is still too hard to another.

I try to work on that by keeping calm, listening to where the other person is coming from, how they are processing the info they have and going from there. I try to stay as civil as possible all the while being real and not a yes man sucking up to them, or to avoid them getting hurt feelings. I try to give them a chance to articulate their reasoning logically or with facts if they have them.

What more I can do short of just nodding my head and going along with whatever they think no matter how bombast I think it is, I do not know.