Do not belive that you are somebody

Who do you think you are?

In Sweden we have this “law” that´s called Jante´s law. It´s a really stupid law that undermine a persons selfesteem and uniqness. The law was written by the Norweigan-Danish author Aksel Sandemose 1933 in his novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks. Every swede knows that the Jantelaw is diminishing and destructive but it has a very strong influence in the Swedish society. This you can see, not only in what people do but also in how people treats you if you do something out of the ordinary. I sometimes get the question if I´m born in USA or if I´ve lived there for a long time because I have a kind of “success-attitude” that you seldom find in Swedes.

The ten rules state:

1. You’re not to think you are anything special.
2. You’re not to think you are as good as we are.
3. You’re not to think you are smarter than we are.
4. You’re not to convince yourself that you are better than we are.
5. You’re not to think you know more than we do.
6. You’re not to think you are more important than we are.
7. You’re not to think you are good at anything.
8. You’re not to laugh at us.
9. You’re not to think anyone cares about you.
10. You’re not to think you can teach us anything.

Depressing reading, right? But it explains a lot about us in Sweden in case you meet someone. 🙂 So when I talk about Positive Thinking in Sweden some people almost see it as a threat because it might render a positive change in their life and if that happens they haven´t got anything to complain about. Well, this isn´t correct all over but a lot of the Jantemenatlity still dominates some peoples lives but it´s much better now than it used to be. And because of this Jantelaw it´s often people see themselves as victims and in Sweden we have an expression for this, “offerkofta” in english “victimcardigan”. So, one way to be happier is to get rid of the victimcardigan. Setbacks is part of life and pretty inevitable. But to put on your victimcardigan and demand others to feel sorry for you isn´t the solution. It won´t make anything better, on the contrary, if you wrap the victimcardigan tight around your body and keep wallowing the negative things you´ll only stay in the negativity and fell even worse. So, instead of walloing see what you can do about the situation and then do it. If you can´t do anything to change the situation you have to accept it and instead find alternative thoughts that makes you fell better.

I hope my English was good enough so you could understand this post.

See you in my next post!

You Rock!!!