Today I Realised I was Average
A far from pleasant epiphany, believe me.
I would never consider myself an arrogant person, but I will wholeheartedly agree that I am someone who has strong self-confidence in my abilities. I have always been proud of my accomplishments in the various fields of academics, sports, music, and personality, but today I realised I was ordinary. I became aware of the normalcy of my supposed achievements and successes.
While I might have excelled in these things in my previous school, in my current place, I now find myself surrounded by national swimmers, national piano players, national debaters, and hold it… businesswomen (sorry I had to end the diacope!). Incredible! I am in absolute awe of their achievements, but I can’t deny that I feel I don’t scrape up in comparison. The feeling of inadequacy, as you can probably tell, absolutely, definitely, sucks. Really bad.
So what I do about this feeling of incompetency?
While this insecurity is something new to me and only lasts momentarily, I cannot imagine how those who have to cope with this lack of self-confidence day after day in a cyclical cycle of melancholy must feel. Please do reach out to me if you would ever want to share your thoughts, advice, or experiences via email (You can reach me at shentalrohan22@gmail.com). I am genuinely curious to understand.
The questions I ask as I find myself in this predicament are what’s so wrong about being average and why do I feel the compulsive need to always be outstanding? Tracing back this somewhat necessity to exceed expectations, I feel that it was born out of being able to be outstanding in various areas naturally in my previous years simply by putting in more effort than the rest and trying different things, which have, as a result, influenced my mindset that I should be this way all the time. But I want to teach my mind to leave this concept behind and focus on simply doing my best at what I attempt and pushing my own boundaries with disregard for what the people around me, or even online for that matter, are doing with their lives. A lot of the time we feel the pressure to be continuously amazing or insecure about our qualities or actions because of our belief that society is judging us.
But the truth is- they aren’t. I know it’s bold to say “the truth” when I have no idea if it is true, but I think that just believing in it, strongly enough, can drive out the negative thoughts we have of ourselves. While I am obviously aware that with 8 billion people on the planet, there will be tons and tons and tons of people who will excel at things more than me, it is accepting that some of those people are those I interact with on a daily basis that is hard because they are a reminder of what I have not achieved and why I pale in comparison. Yet, as I begin to train my mind out of the victimizing attitude to feel inspired by what my peers have done do I begin to feel my good old self-confidence come back.
I’d just like to add my apologies for being so inactive for the past few months, ever since I started my A Levels! I’d love to say I was too busy to write an article but I think the episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine I watched today would disagree with me! I’m really excited to have settled into my new role, and I have definitely got loads to write about in the next few weeks as we approach the end of 2020! I hope everyone has been staying safe and that conditions, wherever you are in the world, are improving. Sending you lots of good vibes and positivity!
Thanks for reading, and as always, do leave me a response if you’d like or drop me an email at shentalrohan22@gmail.com
Thanks for sticking around,
Shental
