The pressure of being the best

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It may start during school days or a little later when you see your friends earning more than you but it happens to each one of us and it always leaves us dissatisfied. We always strive to be the best, we start competing like headless chickens running in a race. If only we knew how important it is to become better first. Becoming better has lesser stakes involved, you are competing with no one but yourself but when we start comparing and try to be the best amongst our friends/social circle we put ourselves in immense pressure, let alone the risks.

Twenties is a crucial time in everybody’s life, we all want to make it big, make something out of ourselves but the reason of becoming something has changed altogether. We all have become mere guinea pigs who don’t weigh the pros and cons of a particular thing. Gone are the days when we wanted to be the unique one in the crowd, now we’re all mannequins with barely any uniqueness to offer to the world. Today we are doing exactly what our parents used to do when we were younger, compare us to our friends or counterparts. It is fatal, stressful and leads to a state of discontent.

We need to realize that we all have a life of our own, we all have different skills and talents. We all cannot become engineers in MNCs or gifted artists who make great art. There will always be people doing better than us but that is not what is important. We can’t keep doing this to ourselves, feeling low only because somebody else is doing really well in their life.

Success always comes to those who accept the situation and work towards making it better, getting the best out of it. We are no God to change the situation altogether, and accepting this in entirety would certainly help in cutting that pressure which might get converted into blood pressure or heart ailment one day. There was a time when people used to think that quitting means a person is incapable of doing a job but today it has a whole new meaning to it. It means that you are willing to move on in life, to something that is better for you, which suits you and where you see yourself happier. And wasn’t that the aim of life? To be happy and content with what you do. Then why has this sudden urge to imitate people taken over all of us? We constantly force ourselves to do things that may not even be made for us or probably things that we are not made for. And if we all had to do the exact same thing then believe me, we all would have been actors because that is what we do all the time, pretend to be somebody else.

All we need to do is sit back, relax and think. Think what we can do to make our life better. With thousands of new avenues and opportunities awaiting each one of us, we already have the assurance that we will do well in life. Life is usually pretty sorted until we get entangled in this labyrinth of competition and lunacy. Just a little bit of strength and patience, and life will be perfect for you because there is nothing better than being yourself!

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

Invictus BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY

Image Courtesy : FoxNews

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Nandini
Reader, writer, social worker, journalist, closet poet. Loves books, dogs and people . Travel and tattoo enthusiast. Writing came as an epiphany while doing Journalism and Mass Communication from Xavier Institute of Communications. Currently, turning her passion into her profession.

1 COMMENT

  1. Working as a youth counselor for more than 8 years now, I can relate very well to this piece of work. Our youngsters are blindly following what the world asks them to irrespective of making the basic calculations. This leads to a pressure of making the mountain out of the mole requiring efforts and adds on to the pressure. My word to every aspiring young candidate is, you are best in yourself. There is something that no one can do better than you. Exploit it for the better tomorrow for yourself and your nation.

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