We are worried about the wrong things
“My manager doesn’t think I am good enough”, “I am probably letting my parents down”, “The girl I love doesn't love me”, “My friends don’t like me”. All this sounds familiar, right? That’s because at some point in our life or the other, at least one of these things do come into our mind and we end up thinking about it back to back going crazy in our heads.
And let me assure you of this too, while going in circles in our head about thinking of all this stuff, we feel bad because we are being sad. It’s like being sad for being sad. Now, this is called Feedback from hell (Sounds hideous, right? Trust me it is). It’s basically thinking about something and having an emotional reaction to that thought and then choosing our next emotional reaction based on the previous one. Think of it as a never-ending loop, just going in circles.
Let me explain this with my own example. After switching my job, on initial days when I was having trouble to cope up with the pressure of new work and learning new things, while walking back to my hostel I used to think maybe I am not good enough for this job, maybe I am not good enough, and all those thoughts used to make me kind of sad and then a new thought comes in my mind that “why am I being so sad”, this is not how I should be feeling, and guess what that used to make me even sadder. And congratulations, you just won yourself another sad sleepless night.
Now take a minute, read all those things I mentioned at the starting of the article. Can you figure out one thing that's common? Yeah, some of you might think it’s self-doubt. Yes, you are not wrong, it is, but let’s dig in a bit deeper. How I see it is that all those things don't just involve “me”, all those things are based on somebody else’s version of “me”. All those things, all those thoughts are based on what others think about us. How they treat us, how we wanted to be treated, and how we are actually treated. What we expected the reality to be, and what reality actually is.
Now let’s take my favorite “Problem solving through the self-questioning” approach here. So obviously the problem here is that we are feeling bad. And when we ask ourselves the first question- “Why am I feeling bad?”. We get the answers same as what I said at the starting of the article. Now let’s go to the next level “Why do my friends don’t like me?”. You’ll probably get an answer like- they don’t call or text you as much as they do to others. Or something like they don’t invite you to all the parties or events they go to. Let’s go deeper, one more level- “Why does that make me sad?”. This one is tricky, isn’t it? You’ll get an answer similar to something — “That’s what friends do. And that you expect them to treat you as a friend.”
In case you are wondering why the last paragraph ended, It’s because you have the answer, you just didn’t realize it. The part where you “expect” them to treat you in a certain way is the problem here. That’s the part you worry about and that’s exactly my point here. You are worried about something that’s not even in your control. Can you go into someone else’s mind and tell them to treat you in a different way? Think of you differently? Have different feelings for you?. Well, the answer is obviously NO until and unless you’ve learned how to do that(in case you have, teach me and humanity too).
The thing is that most of the time we worry about stuff that’s not even in our control. We worry about how others see us, how others treat us and we forget that we have to treat ourselves in a better way first. We should be the best version of ourselves first because that’s all we can do. We all know that we cannot make everyone happy at the same time. You cannot be the best version for someone because obviously, that won’t be the best version for some other person and you cannot have more than one version, can you? So why do we worry about being good enough for a particular set of people? Why do we worry about a problem that’s not even our problem? Why do we worry about a problem whose solution is nothing but us?
If I have to put my point in one block, it’ll be- “Your problems should be related to you and you only. Your problem should not include somebody other than you. Because then the solution will involve not only you but other’s too and you obviously cannot make everyone right”. You don’t have to please everyone around you, you don't have to live up to the expectations others set for you. Live up to the expectations you set for yourself. Please yourself. Be your best version. That doesn't mean you should become heartless and rude to everyone around you. Stay kind, stay happy but work on yourself without worrying about other’s opinions about you.
When your problems are just yours, the best thing about them is they are actually solvable regardless of the fact whether they are easy or difficult to solve. It’s not always the case if your problems have others. The thing is, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is that you’re feeling a certain way, what you have to understand is that it is your responsibility to deal with it and feel a certain way instead. And that’s it, there you go, just choose the right problems for yourself and you won’t find yourself in a dichotomy all the time and probably have more sleepy nights(exactly how they should be).
