Disillusionment
Trolls feed on the seven deadly sins
Feedback from Critikis:
A feeling of disappointment resulting from the discovery that something is not as good as one believed it to be.
I used to say that the honeymoon was over and employers were to blame. (?)
As time has passed and I have distance from the 'events' of my past employment I see a new truth. Time after time, I painted an illusion of what the employer would provide me, or what the job would give me. I thought far less of what I would give to the employer.
Now that I'm self-employed, I see that what I get as an employee is a direct result of what I give to my employer. In fact, it's quite unbalanced. I have to give far more than I get. :)
Entrepreneurship has a romantic quality to it. It's the modern day label for the American Dream. But many are painting a false picture to benefit themselves. Their own success is built upon nothing more than an illusion that anyone else can do it if they only follow in their footsteps (an pay them the money to teach them). The world is so full of naivety and gullibility.
One of the more costly deceptions in my own life was being convinced to pull all my retirement out of a traditional 401k in favor of a self-directed IRA. A self-directed IRA is fine if you are able to actually invest the time to gain the knowledge to properly self-direct your investments. Given the time and knowledge, it's true that you can do much better on your own. But a marketers job is to selectively share the stories of the minority who succeed, not the majority that fail. They wouldn't have a job if they told us of those who made bad investments and lost their savings. They don't tell us how the transaction fees can end up costing you as much (if not more) then what your financial planner charged. The fact is, they prey on our greed (one of the seven deadly sins which I touch on later).
Is disillusionment the act of being deceived? No. Deception is no where in the definition, yet we often add it in to put the blame on someone besides our self. Instead, it's simply the realization when we discover something (or someone) is not as we imagined it would be. Our hero's will never live up to the ideals we create in our mind. Disillusionment is only the feeling of being deceived, and since feelings are not real, disillusionment is not real.
It’s painful because it requires admission to being deceived in the first place, and nobody wants to be deceived. When our beliefs are challenged, we almost always fight to prove otherwise. It’s an admission that we were duped. And it’s a hit to our ego because it shows a level of gullibility, which nobody wants to admit.
The source of disillusion is illusion. Illusion is defined as a distortion of reality. Because outcomes rarely line up as we expect them to, expectations plant a seed of discontent.
The truth about disillusionment is it’s self-made, all of it. And from it, stems a variety of tightly related negative emotions like discontent, regret, and frustration.
It began the day you were born. Your parents were so proud, they boasted your very existence. That pride began to build a distorted identity (good or bad).
Parents will instinctively put their own lives in danger if it means saving their child. The more others see who we are (or what we do) as important, the more fuel we give our ego.
Given your identity is born from an illusion, it's no surprise we eventually become disillusioned.
Many of the most influential people on social media rarely read anyone's posts but their own. The only time they pay attention is when they are the topic of discussion, and even then filter out what they want to hear.
Social media breeds discontent. When we witness others living a life larger than our own, we envy them. Envy is one of the seven deadly sins and those who elicit envy are perhaps the greatest of the sinners. I am not religious, but I find that statement very revealing.
The truth is that a picture posted on Facebook is only a snapshot of an event, and the smiles get turned on when the camera appears. Facebook is like our own little reality show, and likes on social media only reinforce a 'fake' world. Real life is not always interesting or pretty, and often it's messy. The truth is most reality shows are scripted to an extent. Do you ever wonder how much of someone's time line is scripted?
Real life is in a continuum of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feelings. The majority of which is spent in neutral (and much less interesting to others).
Marketers are illusion builders.
Anyone attempting to convince you of their claim can slant (or even make up) a statistic to provide so-called 'evidence' to support their claim. Marketers distort reality by leaving out details that might convince us otherwise.