#124 "Tofu Mentality" is Also a Personality Trait

I have always lived my life wanting to change myself.
My body type, my personality, everything—!
I even thought that it would be better if I just wasn't who I am now.I'm using the past tense, but there is a part of me that still thinks that way.

The thing I want to change most about myself right now ismy mental weakness.
I want to change my so-called"tofu mentality,"which crumbles at the slightest hurt.

I live my life thinking that, but I haven't been able to become strong.
And so, the days of feeling depressed again continue even now.

Completely denying my mentally weak self

If I make a small mistake at work,I immediately get discouraged.
Even if I'm just scolded a little,I get terribly hurt.
If things don't go well,I immediately deny myself.

Oh, how weak I am—.
I end up repeatingmeaningless self-denial.

When I developed adjustment disorder, I kept denying myself every day.
I don't want to live a life as a person with a weak mentality.
I hate how weak I am, to the point where I can't adapt to society.

I want to change my tofu mentality! I want to be strong!

I thought that many times, reading self-help books and studying psychology.
However, my mentality never became strong at all.

What should I do to change?
What should I do to become strong?

I was agonizing over that, but recently I suddenly realized something.
Have I ever actually acceptedthis "mentally weak self"?

Acceptance and change are a set

I think self-transformation that starts from self-denial will never end.
No matter how much I change,I cannot affirm that changed self.

So, what should I do?
It's a cliché, but I suppose it's important to accept yourself first.
"It's fine to stay as I am now. But I'll try to change because I can become an even more wonderful version of myself by doing this."Something like that.

In fact, I notice that for things I have changed positively, I am not denying the self before the change.
For my diet,I make improvements while thinking, "(It's fine as it is, but) wouldn't this be tastier and healthier?"And for how I use my time,
I make improvements while repeating experiments, thinking, "(It's fine as it is, but) wouldn't I be able to secure more time for reading if I did this?"

Accepting yourself and changing yourself might be a set.
Looking back on my daily life, that's what I thought.

Thinking about it that way, I realizedI have never once accepted this tofu mentality of mine.Because I was just denying my mental weakness and only thinking about wanting to change it.

But I didn't know how to accept that my mentality was weak.
However, a common word written on a page I happened to find shed light on how to accept my tofu mentality.

That word was"personality."

Tofu mentality is also just one personality trait

I got an inspiration from the first sentence of the page mentioned above.

With those two simple words, I felt like I was finally able to acknowledge my own mental fragility a little bit.
I see, this 'tofu mentality' is also just another personality trait, I thought.

The moment I accepted that, for some reason, Ithought of Pokémon.
Every Pokémon has some kind of weakness.
Even incredibly strong ones like Mewtwo or Charizard have type weaknesses, after all.
That too ispart of their personality, and once you accept that, you think about what moves to teach them and what kind of team to build to fight with.

Perhaps being someone with a fragile mentality is the same thing.
Once I acknowledge that I have a fragile mentality, maybe I should think about how I should live my life. Maybe I should think about how to make the most of the strengths I do have.

I am a person with a 'tofu mentality.' That is one of my personality traits.
Now that I have been able to turn such a trivial realization into an article of about 1,700 characters, perhaps this is the very moment I have been able to transform that trait into a strength.