Jmall, if everyone is hired by the Government, you would be too; you're not different from everyone else! If I believe like you do, then you are the one who has been hired by the Government and I have not? If you "worry" about what you think, just "assume" maybe it is wrong and decide to think the opposite, positive thing. Feeling afraid is not the same as actually being in danger. Assume you are not in danger and just feel you are until something bad actually happens. They can watch you type all day but until someone actually says or does something to you about it, you are fine.

Shadowghost, I think you are equating mistakes with being a fool or a loser. One cannot learn anything without making mistakes. If you do not know something (and we cannot know "everything") then you have to learn it and until you learn it, you have to make mistakes! Do not be so hard on yourself. Start enjoying your mistakes Mistakes are just practice for what we're learning. One has tests in school to see how well one is learning, how much one has learned so far, not to compare with others or be sad or anxious if one's score is not as good as someone else's! Everyone has their own path and if it takes you several tries to understand an algebra problem that I get first try, there is undoubtedly something else that you would get first try that I would not; so what? It is like comparing apples and oranges to compare me to you in that way.

Name calling tells about the person doing the calling, not the person called. That you feel you yourself have been a fool or a loser is about you and your judgment of yourself. If I (or your parents or anyone else) call you a fool or loser, they are talking about their means of judgments, not about who you actually are and what you are about; only you can know your path. But why would you want to define yourself as a fool or loser? It does not help you on your path.

Calling someone else those names does not help you (or hurt them) either. Yes, actions can be foolish but that's only from hindsight that we see it is so. And a particular action does not a "fool" make. Also, what is foolish to me may not be foolish in your life so applying "fool" to another's actions makes not sense.

Likewise, one can lose a sports game or contest of that sort but that makes one only a special conditional loser. There is no real contest in the comparison of one person with another as it is not possible to compare me to you as we are wholly different in background, education, experience, goals. . . selves. It's much like the old "men are better than women" or any other comparisons like that. People cannot be dichotomized in that way, cannot be "opposites" of each other. We're the same, only different