This life that I will embrace...

Sometimes it so happens that you want to do something which you want to do but then at the same time there is something that keeps pulling you from not doing it. Such are the days that I experience these days. I have wanted to write for the longest time now. I have thought of things that I would write about. But every time I sit down to write there is some unknown force that keeps me from letting out my thoughts.

   I wonder if it is the new place I live in now that makes me unconsciously feel conscious about everything I do. A person usually can give the best of his/her capability in anything when in comfort.  Maybe I wasn’t feeling as comfortable as I would in the places that I have earlier lived in.

   This new place where I live now has everything I had imagined of. The facilities are really good compared to the place where I lived during my bachelor’s.  Yet there is some sort of an unease growing inside me that makes me want to weep and sit in a corner hidden from the world around me.

   I never was an introvert before. All this while I believed that I had mastered the art of accepting change in a way no one could. It now seems like I have been wrong all this while.  The changed environment, the people here feel like a lump in my throat that needs to be gulped down.

   As I write this, I start to feel like a lost child wanting to find some light in order to get back on the path I had come from. 

I sometimes feel extremely insecure about the people around me. I feel insecure that they are in some way better than I am. I feel insecure that maybe they would go ahead with achieving all their aims and ambitions and possibly I would fall and not be able to get up because of all the insecurities that I have.

  Sometimes it really is difficult to gather all the broken parts within you to be able to stand on your feet. Sometimes you just want to let the chaos take control of you because you think you cannot do anything to clear the mess. Sometimes you think your world has come to an end and that you should probably compromise on life and go into isolation so that you do not have to face the successful people.  Sometimes you just don’t want to be a part of the competition because even before you actually step in you think that you would lose it. Sometimes you have seen so much success in life that you don’t wish to fail. You don’t wish to fail because the mind cannot accept it. The mind follows a particular algorithm. If it has perceived that failure relates to something negative, then bringing it to accept the fact that failure was just a part of life and making the mind accept it is a task.

   One thing that I have understood after coming here is that one needs to forget his/her past life before going to a new place to start a new life or to just add more into the life that has been lived. The mind needs to start everything afresh to not have any preconceived notions.

As I write and read all that I have written, I feel there is so much that I have learnt about myself. Until now, before I began to put my thoughts in words, everything felt so unclear. My mind felt like a paper on which a child had just scribbled and abandoned it. Now that I have given myself the time to clear the tangled thoughts one by one, I feel good. I wouldn’t say that everything now is clear. I am sure that it will take time. And I would not give up until I am finally able to comprehend the doubts within me.


Image credits: Aindrisha Mitra. 

  

Thinking is good, overthinking is not!

I sometimes wonder how we humans complicate our lives so much by overthinking about something. What's funnier, are the mixed feelings that we begin to have as a result of overthinking.

At this point in time, while I give verses and lectures regarding overthinking and its consequences,  I shamelessly am doing it myself. I sometimes wonder what shall stop me from overthinking and I instantly get an answer.

 'An idle mind is the devil's workshop'.  I have been hearing this phrase since I was in 3rd grade.  At that point in life being idle only gave us chances to make noise in the classroom. But now at this stage in life, being idle has not got anything to do with making noise. An idle mind runs so fast that you forget what you are doing. You cannot concentrate on anything even if it's driving. An idle mind will only force you to think of something that sooner or later will have no meaning in your life.

At this point,  as I write down my deepest concerns,  I also wish to confess that simultaneously I am overthinking of things that shouldn't be a major concern.  There are a million things running in my head.

A few weeks ago I had an interview for my post graduation program. I remember how just before 4 hours of the interview I kept having crazy thoughts. There was a point where I even imagined that the people on the panel who was to interview me would start to shout at me if I answered something wrong.

Finally,  when I was called for the interview,  everything went so smooth. I was tensed,  of course.  But nothing I assumed happened. And a week later I even got selected. Could I ever ask for anything better?

Sometimes,  I ask myself what good could I have possibly done to get all that I have ever dreamt of.  They're scores of girls who don't get to live their lives on their terms. I know girls who don't have dreams big enough and who don't know what it means to have achieved something for themselves in life. Could I just not be thankful for the fact that I had such a supportive family,  such supportive people around who kept pushing me to give my best and never look back?  Alas,  I could not just thank my stars and get over it because again I had to think of all the bad things that "could" happen to me and also ruin my peace of mind by doing so.

So many things running in my mind make me want to cry and laugh at the same time.  I am so overjoyed on realizing the fact that very few girls get to make their dreams turn into reality and that I was one of them. At the same time,  I am afraid of what life has in store for me. I have never been so afraid before. I am afraid if I would be successful to make my dreams reality. I am afraid if I will make all those people who supported me to be proud of me. I am afraid if I can keep up the expectations that people have of me.

In this phase of thinking,  getting frightened and overthinking,  what I am losing is myself.  It is not just me.  I know so many people who think a lot. It not just wastes time but it also kills a person's confidence.

When I confess my deepest thoughts, worries and concerns, do not mistake me to be vulnerable. I am just trying to vent out my feelings and thoughts and feel free. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong in thinking over something. But once you realize that thinking about something is stealing your peace of mind and your confidence, what you have to do first is calm down and then let your feelings out either by sharing it with someone or by writing them down. Just like how I have done it.

Be your own star.

It has been such a long time since I wrote something.  "Well, speaking frankly I do not really have a lot of readers who might be impatiently waiting for my blogs".

Now these are the thoughts that I keep having. The other day I was thinking, “did I start writing thinking that I might end up with so many fans asking me to write regularly?"  Well, the answer was no.  So, since when did I start to think of the results before actually doing something? 

What often happens is that when a person begins to do something out of his or her personal interest,  at first there are chances he/she does the task  out of sheer passion but as time goes on,  if the same person doesn't get any criticism either positive or negative the motivation and passion that was present in the initial stages seems to fade away.  This is an absolute natural phenomenon. Expectation is an undeniably common human tendency. But then losing motivation and passion is not a good sign. 

Over the few days I can say my observatory skills have improved to a great extent (because having finished my exams I am absolutely free).  I have noticed that so many of us lack the motivation that we once possessed. This lack in motivation often leads to under confidence and laziness. 

There are so many ideas that I come up with to write about, but then because of the lack of motivation in me I have become under confident, lazy and forgetful. This means all the ideas that I come up with eventually vanish into the thin air.

"Why do I have to wait for someone to motivate me?” I ask myself.  We human beings always wait for a sign to do something. This behavior can be confirmed as laziness.  It is very unpleasant to hear but we need to accept our flaws.

Our conscious alone is enough to motivate us to an extent that we can achieve wonders. Thinking of the end result leads to distracting ourselves from the mission. When it comes to passion, one should always concentrate on the task and the method in which the task is being done. As far as both these go together properly, we do not have to worry about the outcomes.

I came up with the idea of writing this blog not to show it to people or to make fans (imaginary).  It is a genuine effort to motivate myself to never give up and to always run after my passion. I could probably end up with absolutely nothing by putting my thoughts out into the public. But it will surely help me build my confidence.

Confidence is built after putting in a lot of effort but it can shatter in just a snap of the fingers.  Your confidence might drop a hundred times a day but you can regain it only if you build it for another time by motivating yourself.

In the world we live in today, there are more people who will try harder each time to break your confidence.  So, you need to motivate yourself each time someone demotivates you. At the end of the day, to be a star you need to be your own star.