Beating yourself up for not achieving the impossible? Norse mythology can help.

Image: Johannes Gehrts

Ever accomplish something enormous and still feel like you failed? Thor knows just how you feel.

Fun fact: before Thor and Loki were superheroes, they were gods! In the tale of Utgard-Loki, the gods are challenged to a series of contests by their enemies, the giants. Thor enters into a drinking contest, Loki an eating contest, and their other companions have to run a race and wrestle. Team Gods does their best, but they just can’t get ahead – or so they believe:

“A trough of meat was set before them, with Loki at one end and Logi at the other, and they were to see who could reach the middle first. They met in the middle at the same time, but while Loki had eaten all of the meat between the end and the middle, Logi had eaten the meat, the bones, and even the trough itself! Loki had clearly lost.”

A decisive victory for the giants, and the gods don’t take it well. Who are they if not winners? But then something happens. On the way out, their host confesses that the whole thing had been a trick. Loki wasn’t competing against a giant – he was up against fire itself. The footrace was against thought, “which nobody could ever hope to outrun.” Thor’s drinking horn was connected to and constantly refilled by the ocean, which could never be finished. And yet the giant confesses “we were actually greatly afraid that you were going to drink it all. When you cross over the sea again, you will see how much you have lowered its level.” The wrestling match was against old age, who admittedly “took a long, long time to fall.”

The gods had become losers in their own eyes, and apparently in the eyes of others. But despite believing they had lost, they were very nearly doing the unthinkable. Their host, who moments ago they’d seen as their better, fearfully begs them not to return.

So I ask you this. Are you in an eating contest against fire? Are you down on yourself for not being able to accomplish the impossible, or fix what lies beyond your control? Are you aware of just how well you’re doing, or are you dwelling on the fact that you didn’t also eat the bones and the trough?

It happens in so many ways both large and small….

Overambitious to-do lists that will only make you feel bad about yourself.

Holding yourself to the output of your best day, every day — or someone else’s best day — and treating anything less as slacking.

Comparing your actual self to someone else's social media feed.

Assuming that you’re the problem when in fact you’re crushing it – though you have the giants quaking in their giant boots!

If something isn’t going your way, no need to take it personally. If you’re seeking change, make your goals clear, concise, and achievable. At least in the first phase. And if you’re feeling bad about not making an unreasonable change, you might want to ask yourself if this is really failure, or just an illusion?

(Text courtesy of Daniel McCoy.)