i, me, myself

Has it happened with you when you did something which you didn’t feel great about but was loved by others? You are given a task which you managed to do just about satisfactorily by your own judgment yet ended up satisfying the others very much. It has happened with me few times in my life and as recently as last week! A trivial example would be during the taped ball cricket I played recently. I had hard time adjusting to this format of cricket and had an ordinary performance. It was much harder and less fun than the real hard ball cricket which I play regularly every weekend. But, somehow, for reasons unknown to me, the captain was so impressed that he wanted me to come regularly. Moreover, he recommended my name to a team in Houston Cricket League (which is the highest level of hard ball cricket I can play in Houston!) who invited me to play for them. Though it has helped me to boost my morale and spirit, the skeptic in me can’t help wonder the reason behind this.

It could be either due to the high self confidence which makes me set high standards for myself in whatever I do - which never makes me satisfied in entirety or the other side of the coin- due to the very low self confidence – that my work is never good enough. Given my track record, I highly doubt the former, and I wish it not to be the latter.

Or it could be due to the low expectations others have from me. They might not have given much into my performance that they were taken by surprise. There is another possibility of some people I have interacted with has low standards set for themselves, but, when it is this random, it can’t be coincidental.

And a third -most likely-reason would be that I just did fine as expected and I am just conjuring up something from nothing.

I used to have a thought process when in school - I used to hope for the worst, be it in exams (or say, when India plays cricket). In that way, if I do badly, it would have been as expected and would have prepared me for it. And if I did well, it would be pleasantly surprised. I know it was a pessimistic way to approaching challenges, but it used to work like charm for me and I have been 'pleasantly surprised' more often.

(It all got messed up once it came to Masters level -I expected it to go bad and it did! Well, that's story for another time.....or never)

Anyway, in spite of all this rambling and confusion, whatever the rationale is; at the end of the day it makes me feel good about yourself and happy for what you have done. Ultimately that’s the only thing that matters. After all, it’s all about loving yourself ;)

AVS

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