The 2 C’s of life- Criticism and Confidence.

The 2 C’s of life

Criticism and Confidence.

Scenario:

(2 friends sitting in a canteen chatting about politics and sports)

Person A: You should certainly find an English coaching class for you sir, because your speaking skill are as bad as my grandmother’s knowledge about computers.

Person B: And Sir since when you had so much of expertise in this language? You have done a doctorate in this language? I have a fairly good command over this language than you. It is only sometimes that I stumble upon words but I speak quite well most of the times.

Person A: Am sorry sir, but my intentions were not to hurt you but only wanted you to know your weak points so you can make improvements and come back strongly.

(A silence followed by dispersion)

How many times we face criticism with a straight face and welcome criticism in our life with a positive intent to work towards the various loopholes that we have created in our living environment either intentionally or just because we never find such things important in our life?

Some people never want to face alien situations and some wants to run away from it at the speed of 299 792 458 m / s .It’s all in the perception. Problems are like multi colored Frisbees which we used to play with in good old times. You throw one and it would come back most of the time. At times we would be facing the problem because of helplessness and realize that it wasn't such a big deal which we had created it unnecessarily.

How many people actually have felt confident about themselves after facing such situations or after solving different problems? As the old saying goes, "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger." Even our white blood cells can fight more strongly because the weak virus in the vaccination which are like small problems in our life makes them stronger and alert in a way that helps them fight the epic boss battle with the fatal virus at the later stage.

It is always hard to digest criticism because you always feel like an animal under attack and then you try to break the shackles forming around you. Keep one thing in mind that it doesn't matter whether the person criticizing you is doing it just to break you or he’s doing it In order to help you know your rough areas. The only thing that matter is what you are trying to achieve out of the things that you come to know about yourself after criticism.

Now I am sure many you have must have played the famous 8 bit video game “Mario”. While many of us never tried to gain any mantra or lesson from it but after spending so many years playing that game, I realized even though the character is controlled by the console in our hands ,how much of zeal and passion that character showcase in finding that damn princess which was  cheating on Mario at every level. Did Mario ever stopped seeing one of those ducks or all those big turtles and asked them as to why they keep on troubling him so much. I always imagined Mario looking into the face of that turtle and telling him that he’s just from a middle class family and also a general category guy who’s sick and tired of competitive exams and high scores.”Stop troubling me oh mighty turtle. I have to save this princess and then have to go for my GMAT preparation because I need high scores. Princess won’t be there for me to help me earn my bread and butter”.

I am sure Nintendo never thought of this, but it’s just a fact which came to my mind.

Problems creep up like weed. One has to have the patience and power to remove those entire wild weed growing up in your mind and life. Success after failure is sweeter than anything else and he who has never faced failure had never tried anything new and challenging in his life on the first place.

Why is confidence such a big factor in our lives. Do you think it would have been possible for Sir Edmund Hillary, Bachendri Pal, Junko Tabei to climb Mount Everest without self confidence? I couldn't have even written this article without having the confidence to inspire people by my thinking let alone climbing that Mt. Everest. I always hear people getting low on confidence because of failures in life or just because they are not in a very comfortable position as compared to others.Just because an IIM student can solve triangle equations and average problems faster than you or remember 10 more synonyms than you doesn't necessarily mean he's better than you.Remember that many of the world's greatest business tycoons are college dropouts not by chance but by choice.                                                      

There was a man who made living selling balloons at a fair. He had all colors of balloons, including red, yellow, blue, and green. Whenever business was slow, he would release helium -filled balloon into the air and when the children saw it go up, they all wanted to buy one. They would come up to him, buy a balloon and his sales would go up again. He continued this process all day. One day, he felt someone tugging at his jacket. He turned around and saw a little boy who asked, "If you release a black balloon, would that also fly?" Moved by the boy's concern, the man replied with empathy, "Son, it is not the color of the balloon, it is what is inside that makes it go up."

Everything that can make us reach the top in our life is already there inside us. We just have to use it in the right direction. For every person facing difficulty in accepting failure and moving on in life, it’s really important for him to look what he is carrying on his back. If he’s carrying the humongous load of the grief of past failures then he would crumble up after few steps. It is important to learn from your mistakes. Even a toddler stays away from touching hot objects after experiencing the pain before. People sometimes fear the failure and thus give up even before trying the same. When gamblers keep on trying in the hope of striking gold even once, why can’t we do the same thing for the greed of success? Confidence level should reach a stage where it gets reflected in your actions and speech. 

People should take back the tales of impossible tasks when they see you present at that place. Even small kids keep on trying whole day to make something worth out of the whole set of Lego We have all procrastinated at some time in our lives. The important thing is to finish off whatever things you can get on your hands on, because doing one thing with 100% focus is always better than doing 10 things at a time by 10% efficiency and precision on each making it worthless.

Do not let anyone crumble you and your dreams. People like Stephen Hawking are doing miracles in the field of science even after suffering from paralysis. When a person who’s not able to move any of his body part could bring in such ravishing concepts, then most of us are still fit enough to conquer every single task reserved for present and future. Not every individual can be an IAS or a famous doctor, but each one of us can be at least honest and confident in what we do. You can become a cobbler at one point of time but  then you should become an artist where the whole world knows that you are a damn good cobbler because it does not reflect your status but it surely reflects the honesty and dedication with the help of which you became  known all over the world.

  

 Abhinav Pandey-The story teller.