Here’s something I experienced and the lesson I learnt from it:
Starting off, I’m a student. An A-grade student at that. I was one of the top five in my class last year, and my classmates worshipped me. It was all so lovely until this year started. I was put in a class full of toppers, and guess what? I was an average student.
My confidence went down in flames, and I found myself dedicating all the time I had to either study or scroll, totally ignoring my hobbies and passion. I literally slept three to five hours to study, barely aced it and forgot it for the next exam.
It was so depressing. I felt that I wasn’t becoming any better and not worthy at all if I couldn’t be better than my peers. This form of self-image got the hang of me, and I tried so many things to cheer up, only to feel down the next day. I cared too much about what others would think of me.
The exams I wrote and what the people in my class got decided my mood for the day. Moreover, my friends were also too concerned about the grades they got and eventually, I started blaming the exams, my teachers, and the expectations I was subjected to for my mood, instead of acknowledging that I had to change my self-image.
Being constantly exposed to such an environment that only triggered negative emotions like hate, and showed no way to think otherwise, I fell into the trap. School might seem like a petty reason to hate life but that’s what happened in my case.
I felt like I didn’t care about my dreams and aspirations anymore. Looking back, it’s devastating, because I almost gave up on my dreams and the life I truly wanted.
I read all of my previous entries in my diary, and I saw that I wrote that it didn’t matter if I was alive or not because I didn’t find any joy in living. This was in contrast to my character because I would be the first person to say that life is so beautiful.
My entries at the start of the year and the previous one are evidence that I loved life and wanted to constantly improve to become better and also believed that life could get better every single day. I believed that I could make a change.
It was shocking to see how optimistic I was, and how pessimistic I had become. So, I decided I was going to get better. I decided I couldn’t waste time thinking I was better off dead, because great things were waiting for me, or at least believe that (like I did previously) because thinking about myself as crap sucked. I wasn’t a person who would put myself down for/because of others, and never wanted to be.
Here I would like to add I don’t think I’m in depression and never was. I become sad sometimes and lose hope and it takes huge courage to build it all up again. This is the first time I observed it happen.
As a person, I’m motivated by words and by small things I do out of my comfort zone. It makes me feel good, and thus proud of myself. I did exactly that.
I realised that comparing myself to others would only bring me down and even if they looked down upon me, the perception they had of me had nothing to do with me. I was more than the grades I got and had different expectations for myself, and I’m obliged to fulfil only that.
I also realised that I cared too much about my grade only when I was too concerned about what others would think of me.
What other people think of me are their opinions and it is not my business to change or act for them to change it, and also stop deluding myself that they were probably looking down on me.
It was my business to do what I would not regret next year, what I would not regret in five years, what I would not regret in the future.
I didn’t like waking up every single day, wanting it to end as soon as possible because that was not what I wanted myself to do in the future. The future I see myself in is so different and tempting than to stay in bed and cry about how depressing life is.
It’s my life and I am privileged enough to choose how I live it. So why must I choose to live it gloomily when I’m given other choices? Why must I choose to stay sad when I can make it better? Why must I feel like I’m not in control of my life when I can be?
I wasn’t going to think what these people thought of my grades when I earned millions and billions, make it trillions. I was only going to care about what I did to be who I was.
The things I was worried about were temporary and did not require that much attention I was paying it. When I realised it, I was again motivated to be open to people and see them more than my competition and realised that I can forge bonds better if I try.
It was all a matter of how I saw myself. If I had believed that I was enough and it was okay to not be the best at everything, I wouldn’t have felt the need for them to look at me like I was the best.
And that's when I realised it’s essential to look at what’s inside us if we want to change how we see, feel about and behave with others. I learnt it this year, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
While this is my journey, I think it’s safe to say that you have to listen to what’s going inside you too. I know this feels like advice, but that turns out to be my speciality: turning everything into a piece of advice.
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