One thing that’s helped me to keep from getting too down on myself, and to keep going in the face of either success or failure, is to recognize that, as a human being, I’m not as much a set identity as I am a process.
My best understanding of the concept of from Buddhism of not-self (not no-self) is that there is no one thing that we can hang on to and say “That Is Me.” We are a flowing, changing, always moving kaleidoscope of thoughts, feelings, and actions.
From this, I can take both my failures and my successes, recognize that they are simply the result of who I was at the time, and do something different if I want a different result, or duplicate what was already done if I want something similar.
“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” Now who was it that said that?
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That’s true. I am not my name, my body, my actions … The very fact that we use “my” before it indicates that these things are a part of “I” or belong to me but I am not them.