It’s not about you, till you make it about you

One of my favourite scene from Doctor Strange is:
The Ancient One: You wonder what I see in your future?
Dr. Stephen Strange: No. Yes.
The Ancient One: I never saw your future, only its possibilities. You have such a capacity for goodness. You always excelled, but not because you craved success but because of your fear of failure.
Dr. Stephen Strange: That’s what made me a great doctor.
The Ancient One: It’s precisely what kept you from greatness. Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all.
Dr. Stephen Strange: Which is?
The Ancient One: It’s not about you.
In this Me-centric world, a lot of people out there feel the pressure and need to be able to project themselves . Your first scroll through any social medium will shower you with people obsessed over their lives and their drops of pretentious posts. And every time I see this, I get this in my mind :-
‘Chichi , do you love me?? Are You Riding?..’
(For those who are unaware, ‘Kiki, do you love me?’ is from Drake’s In My Feelings and chichi means over-elaborate pretentiousness)
Not to demean those people who genuinely use social medium to connect with family and friends, you guys have my respect !!
Fear of not being able to achieve something, Fear of others laughing over you has led many great ideas from even being drafted lest getting criticism later. This fear is what stops you from answering a question asked in classroom or speak your views in front of an audience. This feeling stopped me from doing anything for a few years in my life. I didn’t raise up my hand when i had a doubt so that others do not get an opportunity to laugh over my meagre confusion. But then one day, i realised
“ People will laugh even if you speak your name. Just make that laugh worthwhile, not for them but for you.”
Don’t put up scores for every action you do in terms of how others will rate you, rather mark it up on the scale how good it is for you. Next time, teacher asks to choose between two answers, choose one, not just because you will be right or wrong but because at least you will know if you were wrong. Next time, somebody doesn’t respond to your texts immediately, give a moment of thought before cursing him/her, maybe he/she was preoccupied at that moment or maybe they just didn’t want to reply. It doesn’t imply that you are not worthy of that person’s attention or that he/she has devalued you. ( But yes! if the person is active whenever he/she needs your help, you know what to do)
There will be days when you tank that interview or ruin that date you had longed for , remember
“ You may not be the one who nails it in one shot, but definitely don’t be the one who gives up in two.”
It is not about you but rather the effort you put in. Don’t succumb to your fear, Look it in the eye and laugh. Learn from this and prepare for the next. There is always something bigger and better waiting for you.
You can’t please everyone, nor should you seek to, because then you won’t please anyone, least of all yourself.
- Dylan Moran
Human is a social animal and we value society more than individuality but there is a difference between respecting what others think and obsessing blindly over what they think of us. What really matters is “ What you think of yourself ”. I used to practice competitive programming on an online judge and there was a time when i fathomed the depths of falling down in rating, deeper than what even a fresh beginner could fall down to and I had been practising it for the past 6 months , that never stopped me from practising, I continued to practice from the same profile and after a tedious period of 11 months , I reached back to the rating from where a new user begins. I saw many people make up new profiles whenever their ratings dipped, laughing at my ratings, but that didn’t bother me because I learned a really important life lesson a very hard way. Stop moulding yourself to please others, Please yourself first and rest of the herd will automatically like you.
You can read on the innumerable benefits of not making it about you every time with this awesome article What I Learned When I Stopped Caring About What Other People Thought of Me.
Ending on a quote by one of my favourite characters :

