The following quotation, in which the author discusses how one of her patients was so adept at disassociating from painful situations that her appendix nearly ruptures, exemplifies this argument. "I don't want to die because I can't feel anything. I don't want to end up dead because I can't feel what's going on in my body…" This quotation from Stout's patient Julia indicates how hazardous it can be to gratify oneself for the present moment only to make one's future infinitely worse because of that fact. Julia was so good at disassociation from pain that she was not aware of when there was a reason for the pain and needed to help herself. Similarly, GenMe has been so pacified by the self-esteem movement that in the future, they will lack many of the essential attributes to be able to conduct happy, productive lives. This is largely due to the fact that they haven't learned enough, or challenged themselves in the present which will leave them unprepared for the future. That is the most noxious trap of the inverse relationship between self-esteem and happiness. A close examination of the literature considered in this discourse (Stout's "When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning it Was Friday," Gilbert's "Daniel Gilbert," and Twenge's "An Army of One: Me" indicates that there is an inverse relationship between self-esteem and unhappiness that is highly temporal in nature. That which makes us feel good about ourselves in the present has a negative effect on our future happiness, and may in fact actually produce a substantial amount of unhappiness in the future. This discovery has a number of ramifications for GenMe, which is being raised on unconditional, unabashed self-esteem to the point where its education and other key facets of use in the future has been considerably compromised. The only way, then, that GenMe can hope to find any sort of lasting felicity in the future when they are accomplished adults is to attempt to substitute the fleeting effects of self-esteem with a work ethic and dedication that resembles that of past generations to actually achieve some goal before it feels good about itself. Doing so will rid it of the propensity to be complacent and mediocre, and will actually allow it to utilize the inverse relationship between self-esteem and happiness to...
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