How to handle humiliation by family when you are a failed entrepreneur at age 35?

  • MustacheSwagBag@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    This is the risk you take when you take the road less traveled. You need to accept that a lot of people won’t believe in you for following your own path and not the one that society has paved for you.

    Your family cares about you and they want you to be successful by society’s standards and want you to fit in. That’s normal.

    What you’ve attempted to accomplish is different, scary, mysterious, and risky. People don’t like the unknown and try to protect those they love from being harmed by the unknown, and that’s what you’re experiencing. They think that by making you feel shame for not following what they think is the safest path, they can get you back on track.

    It’s your life, live it how you want. If you become successful in your endeavors, the same people who doubted you will tell everyone they know how “I couldn’t believe it! I never thought he could do it.” And then try to attach their ego to your success. People suck—but the most intelligent ones respect you for who you are and not whether you fit into some mold that society has created for you.

    Come up with a way to turn their humiliation into a joke and make the conversation fun and less focused on their binary judgement of “whether you’re successful” or not. It’s a lot like distracting a dog with belly scratches when they’re being possessive and weird about a bone/toy. Dumb people are like dogs, unfortunately.