Have you ever heard of a narcissistic cough drop? For example, Barack Obama is a narcissist, completely enamored with self-admiration. Our government (public) education system is prone to narcissism when US students believe they are the best in the world in mathematics, but finish 24th in international mathematics exams. But a narcissistic cough drop? Really?
Yesterday I took a look at one of the cough drops from my bulging bag of Halls cherry cough drops. Each drop is wrapped in a little piece of paper, but until yesterday I hadn’t noticed that there are little sayings on these wrappers. A few of them are quite inspiring, like “Don’t waste a precious minute” or “Buckle down and push forth.” But most of the sayings are so narcissistic as to be laughable. Here goes!
“Inspire envy”
“Put a little strut in it”
“Elicit a few “wows” today”
“Hi-Five Yourself”
“Conquer Today”
“Impress yourself today”
“Let’s hear your battle cry!”
“Be unstoppable”
I wonder who the Ph.D. in education was that served as a consultant to Halls in drafting up these cough drop idioms? It had to be some sort of highly-degreed education specialist because I don’t see too many folks strutting down the street hi-fiving themselves and yelling out their battle cry as if they were unstoppable.
I’ve gone off on this tangent before, but the fact is that there are darned few geniuses out there. DaVinci was a genius. Mozart was a genius. Einstein was a genius. The rest of us just do the best with what we’ve got. Today’s teachers tell their children, “You are special.” The fact is that while we may be truly loved by our family and friends, very few of us are truly exceptional. I know for darned sure that I’m not exceptional. The fact is that 99.999 percent of us are just folks with average intelligence who try our best to make a contribution to our family, our workplace, and our world.
Sometimes I wonder…really wonder….if Barack Obama uses Halls cough drops. But just to clarify my position about Halls cough drops, while I’m irritated by the narcissistic sayings on their cough drop wrappers, I’ll have to say that I do like Halls cough drops! I just have to be sure pop it in my mouth quickly and not read the wrappers!
DonSalyards.com 
So let me get this straight…A guy who feels the need to extol his own virtues to the world on a weekly basis is complaining about the narcissism of others? We’ve known that the word politician was synonymous with narcissist for awhile now. I’m not sure if Merriam considers Blogger a real word yet, but when it does it should list narcissist of as a synonym.
Some things to reflect on…
1.) the last US president that wasn’t a narcissist was probably George Washington.
2.) You didn’t list a single solitary example of Barack Obama’s supposed narcissism. You just assumed you could call him one and everyone reading this would automatically agree with your belief(a common sign of narcissism).
3.) Since when is attempting to improve someone else’s self-esteem considered feeding narcissism? Hall’s isn’t bragging about how awesome they are. They are trying to give their customers a little mental pick me up to go along with the physical pick me up their medicine already provides.
Have you ever replied with “terrible” when you’re wife asked you how she looked? Of course not. Because there’s no upside to ruining her confidence. Even if she doesn’t look great it’s better for both you and her if she attacks her day with confidence. If you want someone to put their heart and soul in to something the best thing you can do for them is convince them that doing so will lead to positive outcomes. This is the reasoning behind the public education systems actions. At such a young age there is no benefit in destroying a persons confidence. You can’t honestly know who is great and who is not at such a young age. Therefore fostering a belief in children that they can attain greatness at an early age is the best way to keep them working towards it. Why try and get better at math if people are convincing you that you’ll never be good at it?
What would have happened if someone told an 8 year old DaVinci that he couldn’t paint? A 10 year old Mozart that he didn’t have the mind for music? An Einstein that “sorry, you failed math once therefore a career proving mathematical equations is just out of your reach.”
The first rule of brainstorming is that that there are no bad ideas. The reason is because even if a person offers up a bad idea it doesn’t mean that their next idea won’t be great. But by tearing their first idea apart you may prevent them from even offering up their second. Choosing to compliment a person’s less that perfect idea is not feeding narcissism. It’s encouraging them to continue coming up with ideas.
Occasionally there are people who when told they “can’t” get motivated by it and find a way to make it happen. Good for them, but we don’t have the luxury of assuming every kid is a Michael Jordan. People like him will succeed no matter what. For everyone else there’s nothing wrong with encouraging them to keep trying. Even if it “feeds their narcissism.”
Some think it’s is cute, to just ridicule our president. Makes you feel good that you are so wise, and know it all. You, I fear like so many others, somehow have lost your positive gene and must resort to criticize anything that Obama does — Democrats criticized President Bush for his
policies but not his character. It would be nice if Republicans,like you could follow suit.
I’m not a Republican, but I am glad that Obama is now a dead duck politically for the next 3 years. This should increase investor confidence, if any is to be found. Obama’s time in office will have long term effects, however in the “affordable” health care act that is anything but affordable. By the way, plenty of liberals attacked the character of Bush…plenty of hatred there. I don’t hate Obama but on the narcisist scale he is way up there in my opinion.