We constantly react to or respond to internal and/or external stimuli. Our reaction or response depends on our knowledge, experience, habits, beliefs and, faith that often often define our perceptual bias and prejudice. This often prevents us to seeing straight without any contextual reference to the object of cause and let our perceptual bias react spontaneously to the stimulus, the cause, instead of pragmatically comprehending the cause and responding to it. This becomes the main cause of the stress and strain we experience in our life.
We tend to give in to perceptual illusion than the pragmatic truth. This indicates our lack of true sense of worth and makes us set unrealistic expectations from ourselves. We then lay undue focus on achieving our objective without compassionately and ethically considering its consequences that can be negative both on the long as well as the short run.
When we are aware of our abilities and challenges then we are able to develop our grit, self worth, courage, focus, self-empathy, selfless love, respect to diligently fulfill our expectations. With true self-perception we invariably develop the strength to ethically focus on our achieving our objective, rather than pay attention to "People's perception of us and invariably allow them to control our life with the tagline "What Will People Say?" "Will We be Socially Rejected or Ostrasized?"
Whenever we fail in achieving our set objectives, for example, not qualifying in an exam or test, or our business proposal or job application gets rejected. We do not take kindly to ourselves and accuse ourselves of our failure. Likewise, when we are unable to overcome people's prejudiced and biased reaction to our pragmatic effort, we are overcome with grief preventing us from seeing straight and assessing the cause of rejection/failure. This becomes our blind spot that prevents us from identifying and analysing the cause. Often we ignore the fact such setbacks and failures are a blessing in disguise. We need to approach them with compassion and fortitude to understand it and use it as a stepping stone to overcome the challenges.
Richa didn't qualify the interview and she was offensive to the interviewer's remark. "Sorry, Richa, we cannot select you for the job. You are too closed and not open to learning, teamwork and innovation." She meekly thanked him and hurried out of the room trying to hide her tears. This was the umpteenth time she had not cleared a job interview. She was heartbroken and her self-worth had hit the nadir. From then on, whenever she used to read a job posting she used to tell to herself "I am not fit for the job!" The rejection letters often used to have a trailing advertisement of some institute offering professional skill development programme that would help in having a successful career! Such promotional messages would sadden her, making her believe she lacked the talent to gain employment. She did not have the financial means to enroll for any formal up-skilling course. She started feeling worthless until her sister saw her crying and asked her the reason for her feeling sad. After attentively listening to Richa her sister spoke to her, "Why do you ignore all that you have achieved in your life? When you aware of your knowledge, experience and skills, then why are you applying for every available job? You can informally hone your skills and practice them too. You can apply for jobs that are apt for you and even try out for different avenues like your own small business or such enterprise. Always believe in yourself and remember, sky is the limit. Look up, remain positive and you will be able to find your way out of the woods."
No one can hurt you unless you allow them to. This holds good regarding our thoughts. We have different thoughts passing through our mind. Our mind is like a highway with numerous thoughts traversing it. How we manage in regulating the thoughts is how mindful we are of them.
Meditation is a way to take control of our mind and check the thoughts that worry us, make us anxious and stressful. Meditation empowers us with the ability to live in the moment mindfully aware of our environment within us and that surrounding us.
When we focus on what ever we are doing, such as writing, listening to music, artwork or computing, our focus and mindful involvement in our activity helps us ward off oppressively disturbing and distressing thoughts that can become the cause of worry, anxiety and negative emotions that invariably affect our mental as well as physical health and well-being.
When a child is born, he cries out expressing his awareness of being in a new world away from the sanctuary of his mother's womb. The child is born with few hard wired traits like being an altruist, rationality, love, compassion and child's innocence, until his experiences of living in the world and his perceptions gradually change with what he learns from his parents and people he develop a sense of belonging to. These inputs develop his perception into habits, belief and faith. With life's formal and informal learning and experience, the child, who is an adult now, can change his perceptions, beliefs, and habits, but, as a hallmark of his maturity and wisdom. he has to pass the litmus test is in maintaining his inherent traits of compassion, love, altruism, ability to reason and, innocence, without giving in to any bias, prejudice and blind faith.
We often tell each other to be positive in difficult times. In fact, we find it difficult to remain positive while experiencing perceptual slander, bias and prejudice of the people in the form of idiosyncrasies. This often bogs us down. We try to offset it with a rationale we consider to be positive. This causes undue stress and forces us to prove ourselves while trying to retain our self worth. "In fact, We Have Nothing To Prove When We Are Aware of Our Self-Worth." We can overcome such stress and setbacks with self-belief, self-confidence and a self-worth. The resultant dignity is our ability to see through the illusory vision of external bias and prejudice. We invariably develop the ability to be humble, and courageous enough to compassionately perceive the negative experience such a negative and biased behaviour of the people. The hurt in them that exhibits their low self-worth as pride and arrogance. We should have the ability to discern a cry of anguish from a cry of arrogance.
Maturity is nothing but our ability to be true to ourselves while being aware of our strengths and weakness. Humility to accept our weakness without hiding it behind a false facade. Our resilience, dignity and self worth helps us to overcome our weakness without using any unfair means in doing so. This understanding helps us to observe opportunity in every failure and impending learning in our success and achievement. We eventually consider them to be our steps towards our evolution and wisdom.
Diversity is a universal truth. We meet different kinds of people with different perception, thoughts, beliefs and habits in the form of different social and cultural background. While communicating and interacting with them, we often experience a friction of perceptual differences that often results in ego clashes and run-of-the-mill account of the interaction that is often false information in the form of gossip, grape-vine(informal channel of communication within an organisation, society or community) the ideological differences are projected negatively making us attentive to the symptoms rather than the true cause of the negative repercussion to the differences.
When we are aware of ourselves, we have a pragmatic approach to life, then with our unbiased approach, we will be able to humbly and courageously discern the facts in the form of truths from the misinformation, fake information and gossip, We ask questions not because we have to prove our intelligence, but to find the facts and truth. Any authoritative person will resist our attempt to find the truth by asking us not to argue with him or her. This is a classic example of a rigid mindset of a person who lacks self-awareness and self-worth. Our objective is not to hurt their integrity, but to make them realise that misconception often causes resentment encouraging free flow of false information that may result in short-term gain but long term setback. A person with integrity, courage, wit, compassion, self-respect, focus, ethics has the ability to adapt to any situation without compromising with his dignity and self-worth.
We should not ignore the fact, love, trust, respect, integrity, honesty, courage, resilience, ethics, humility, compassion, rationality-ability to think and innovate and wit are the traits of our character that help us brave any storm and steer clear of challenges without using unjust and unfair means in doing so. We are an integral part of the Earth's environment and with due diligence, it is our sole responsibility to maintain its bio-diversity and ecological balance to sustain ourselves and our home, the Earth.
