Is your opinion really yours or is it formed by hearing someone’s? Be it your friend, family or any stranger in the society?
You hear your friend saying there is good restaurant opened in the town and it is awesome. After hearing all those exciting reviews, you take happy bites, assuming it to be good. It might not be good, but you pretend that as per your friend’s review. You take up the task of passing on same reviews to others. It goes on and on. It’s true for negative case also. Even though we like something, most of the time we agree to others when they say it’s not good. Even when you have to stand for your point alone, stick to it. You don’t have to pretend to be with others. Of course, listen to others, but when forming an opinion, forget the things you heard. Think about only what you feel about it. Stand Alone, But Stand for your point.
Imagine the situation where you keep on getting unnecessary messages or calls from a random person. You keep on answering or replying. Your frustration increase and adds a headache to your life. Same way, Now consider having unnecessary thoughts in your mind. You keep on thinking about it, you either justify it or resist it. Both of that simply drains your energy. Why not block it at the early stage?
When this pandemic started, I was staying at home all time due to the fear of getting affected, my mind was clouded with the possibility of all ‘what if’ situation. But I used to look out of the window and yearn for the day I will go out and enjoy the walk. Going out was a risk at this time. As the result, I was putting on weight and sad about not able to do anything.
One day, I decided I had enough of all this fear, I took enough safety measures and stepped out of the house. At last, I was able to feel the freedom from the restriction. I walked regularly and stayed fit and also happy.
This made me think about the similarity of this with our life. We have the fear of something bad happening in our lives and don’t ever take the risk. We try to stay safe in our comfort zone and only yearn to do something we love. Eventually, this adds depression in our mind and suck out happiness. Take a calculated risk, step out of the comfort zone which exists only in our mind.
It’s a new year, a new beginning. Are you quite excited like a child opening the gift to find what this year has in hold for you? I am not going to deny, I am also pretty excited. Before planning 2021, Let’s look back and peek at 2020 for a moment. I know it’s a tougher year for everyone, thinking it all again makes us sigh aloud. But come on, do you agree every tough situation also teaches us something when we change our perspective?
How simple our life was before pandemic? We worked hard in our job, to spend more on something meaningful like education or our future home, adding memories through the trips, shopping a lot or simply for time-pass like movies and snacks. We believed all this makes us happy or it keeps a healthy social circle.
After pandemic, everything changed upside down. Many people lost their job which they are holding dearer than their life. Many people couldn’t go out on a trip, frankly, living in pandemic itself was very adventurous. Many people didn’t shop, well there was no need for new dresses, pyjamas became our all-time companion. But none of these stopped our life, it went on in the new normal way.
2020 has taught us many things we weren’t very eager to learn otherwise. Even when you put all your life in the job, it only took a few minutes for the company to lay you off when it comes to cost-cutting. We were living peacefully at home without partying or vacationing. We have realized the expense we were doing all were years like shopping or movie is not at all necessary to lead a happy life. It has highlighted the importance of savings for any emergency situation and also the possibility of not having a job. We got loads of time to spend with our family. Our new normal was like a wakeup call for everyone.
Considering all these, if you rethink, 2020 has taught as much hidden good things and has raised many meaningful questions in our mind. Do you still tag 2020 as simply ‘unfortunate’ year?
No good or bad thing happens in our life. There are few things happens which we filter out based on our convenience to either good or bad. Do you wonder why? Consider that you are going somewhere, reached the railway station before the train’s scheduled time. you are waiting for a long time and train arrives on time and you think its good thing happened that day. But consider the reverse scenario, you have to catch your train at 8 pm, the train arrives on time. You reach the station 5 minutes late. Now the same train and timing irritate you. you end up being frustrated and think its bad day.
Consider you are sitting near the window sipping your tea, reading a book and it’s raining heavily. You feel so excited and enjoy nature’s beauty. But consider the revert scenario, you are going to the office in a two-wheeler, you have an important meeting. you already in a hurry and it rains, your dress is spoiled. Your mood is off and you end up cursing the same rain. Before feeling bad about the things that happened, one second try to see the full picture. True that few things got happened, it need not be separated as the bad thing, just because we are not comfortable with that. Take a breath, Don’t spoil the mood. Sometimes things do happens, whether we like it or not.
Today the world is completely different from the one we had known all these years. We can’t go out as we please or can’t stay close to the people as we used to do. We are hearing and trying to apply new terms to our dictionary ‘Social distancing’. We are forced to let go of the things we used to do like partying, gymming and roaming around. Now we are filtering out the need from the wish and fun. If animals are moving back to the comfortable and natural habitat and the environment is self-cleansing, then can we do this to ourselves? Look around you and filter out the unneeded things from your life without which you can live as usual. Look inside your mind and try to do something that you have always wanted to do but was procrastinating because of not having time. Now its time, so start digging up and explore your wishes.
Do you agree that we learn most of the things from what we hear or watch often? Now if you agree to that point, Let’s think about it for a while. We watch movies or serials or simply the videos in social media. Most of these show the negative things in the world unknowingly thinking this will teach us how to see life. There’s always a hero who is so good and innocent and also there are villains who will create loads of problem to the hero. The story revolves around them, in the journey of hero anticipating the problem and at the end how he overcomes them and defeats the villain. Seeing all this, we began to over analyze the people in our life, we end up anticipating anyone to change into a villain at any time and to create a problem. In the process of being the hero, we end up assuming some normal person as a villain in our life. Is this mentality actually protecting us or just making an illusion of being protected? I agree media teaches us how to perceive things, But aren’t we forced to think like they want us to think?
Let’s start this new year from first month with a feeling of gratitude. It could be about anything you have or anyone you met in life. When you find the feeling of gratitude, you will feel good and see the positive things in your life. I will go first, I am feeling grateful for the things I have achieved in life. Now its your turn, take a minute and comment about it😀
Let’s say you have the dream of having your favorite food at a famous restaurant which is undoubtedly your favorite. You are so happy by even thinking about it. You reach that place but unfortunately that shop is closed, You are so damn tired , hungry and disappointed. You see a small shop opposite to that, you go there and order some dish. When it’s served, You take a deep breath, stare at the food and smile inhaling the sweet aroma coming from that. You enjoy eating it and quickly finish every bit of that without wasting or sighing about not getting your favorite food. This is how I define the life well spent, When things go your way, be happy. When things don’t go your way, then also be equally happy. That’s when I say life is well spent.
This picture rightly shows my current situation precisely. I keep on planning and looking at the calendar with unbelievable look to find days passing by. What is your current situation now ?
Saranya 