Successboat

Self-deprecation can be an extremely unhelpful, insidious trait. I am self-deprecating and it’s a strange personality trait to have. Constantly putting yourself down, seemingly in some weak effort to be liked.

I used to have a friend who constantly put me down. Each pathetic put down would be followed with a little chuckle just so I wouldn’t think he was a total prick. It’s banter, he’d say. That’s all it is, a bit of banter. Self-deprecating humour is the same, its simply personal insults dressed up as banter.

It’s pretty difficult to be successful when the self-deprecation runs deep. Modesty I’m ok with, but the put downs need to stop.

In my family we used to call it the failboat whenever we screwed up. Taking another trip on the failboat. If we got lost, missed a travel connection or some hyped event turned out to be a damp squib, we would call it the failboat. All aboard the failboat. Our family watsapp group was called failboat. I recently changed it to successboat. My daughter will say that’s cringe, but I like it. I feel better for changing it.

I’ll try to be mindful of my use of self-deprecation in future. My shtick needs updating. My entire standup routine is going to need a rewrite.