An Idea To Share
Maybe I Am The Bad Guy
We all must have heard, or even at some point said the phrase “It’s always my fault.”, of course this sentence is often loaded with sarcasm and implies the opposite of what the person says, but what if i told you that unknowingly, you spoke about one of the best ideologies for self-improvement. Judgement is one of the most widely available and used skills in our society, we’re very quick and adept at pointing out the faults and shortcomings of others even when it isnt required or asked for. Some disguise it as ”constructive criticism” meant for the other person in order to help them improve, either in a specific field or just in general life. Well to quote the wise words of airlines ”Please put on your own mask before helping others.”. Observing and accepting one’s own faults and shortcomings can be difficult, to put it mildly. However, it is one of the most effective ways to grow as an individual.
Coming back to the original sentence, in most cases, it IS your fault, and that is only relevant piece of information you should be focusing on. If in any given situation, something bad happens and your contribution to it was only say 30% and the rest was some other person. The point is, what will you achieve by looking at the other 70% ? You’re spending your time and energy analyzing the mistakes you Didn’t make, what’s the point of that? What results are you looking for? You won’t be able to change the other person, only they can do that and if you’re that enthusiastic about bringing change in someone, well why not yourself? There’s only one person in this world that you have access to at all times, only one person you have to constantly live with, and only one person over whom you have the 100% authority to change and that’s yourself.
Someone else being worse than you doesn’t make you good, it makes you less bad, but bad none the less. The most shocking part is the fact that judging someone’s errors is something all of us are great at, i’m not even asking you to develop a new skill, I’m just asking you to use it on 1 person instead of 8 billion. Use it on the one person that matters the most, who’s involved in everything you do. I won’t lie and say its easy but its necessary, it’s the first step. You could take the world’s most minor disease to the world’s greatest doctor and the first thing he’d do is diagnose you. Without knowing what the problem is how will we ever deal with it?
Whenever something bad or more accurately, undesirable happens to you, the first thought you should have is ”What did i do wrong”, It doesn’t matter if you were only 1% in the wrong, that 1% should be your 100%, because nothing can be done about the remaining 99%, so what’s the point? Doing this initially is tough, just like pretty much everything else in life you do for the first time, but we’re creatures of habit and slowly this’ll become your norm. With time it’ll become effortless, just like we judge and criticize others effortlessly.
This will help you realize your own shortcomings and work on them, slowly becoming a better person, and also a humbler person, because you don’t reject your flaws, you accept and embrace them. You know you’re capable of being wrong, no one else knows how many mistakes you make more than you. The truth does hurt initially but lying is frankly, just dumb. If your house was on fire and someone told you “Your house isn’t on fire.” Would the fire extinguish? Of course not, now you’ll just ignore it a little longer and let it do a little more damage before finally facing it. Similarly, telling yourself you don’t have flaws or you don’t make mistakes doesn’t prevent them from happening, instead you just let yourself make the same mistake again.
The takeaway is that judging and criticizing others is walking, just in the wrong direction, it’s having the right keys, and opening the wrong door, it’s giving your 100%, to something that yields nothing. Why not put in less effort for more results? Sounds nice to me at least, maybe you should try it as well sometime, because the fire won’t go away if you ignore it, and if it does, it’ll only be after everything’s ash.
Shangari