Our Hideout
The fault in my stars
‘My life is miserable’, ‘Everyone has their life figured out, except me of course’, ‘No one around me knows how hard my life is, they can throw out advice because life is easy for them’. These are some things I often think, especially on the days I feel low. I am sure it’s not just me who bombards their brains with such thoughts. These thoughts emerge from our addiction of victimizing ourselves and failing to take responsibility of our lives.
When I failed an exam for the first time in my life I blamed my teacher for not teaching well, there could be some truth to that (teen me was convinced that that was the complete truth), but it was me who had not worked hard enough. When I stopped pitying myself and took responsibility for my grades they improved. What is missing in our lives is not a material commodity or a person (a good maths teacher in my case), but the lack of contentment and the craving for sympathy and empathy.
We live in an illusion of helplessness to feed our ego. Telling ourselves stories of how we survive and kick life in the butt despite all the challenges life throws at us, gives us a feel-good factor. I agree life is tough, but blessings outnumber our challenges, and later we realize even the challenges were blessings in disguise. No matter what stories we tell ourselves of achieving despite the obstacles, the truth is that we play only a small part in our success, most of it is grace, luck and contributions from other people. In my opinion modern self-help is partly responsible for encouraging this mindset.
Learn to accept the responsibility for your shortcomings and failures, you only fool yourselves by playing the victim. It is the biggest obstacle for you to conquer, as long as you play the victim you will fail to progress because you will reason every failure with an external factor and will hide comfortably in the blanket of your fear of responsibility. Embrace your shortcomings and work on them.
P.S- I was only a bad student in grade 8 and 11, don’t judge🤣.
- Sartha
