Let's close our eyes.
We often mistake ourselves with what we do.
There is a famous quote which says,
You are not your work.
Hearing something like this,
It just pierces through the heart.
What we don't know in terms of our skills or our lack of experience in doing something is accidentally projected on we not being good or we lacking something.
If I cannot solve a particular problem using software programming,
A.
I don't know how to program properly,
B.
I might not have enough information needed to solve the problem,
Or C.
I might not know how to proceed.
The neural pathways necessary to solve a problem might not be so easily accessible to me.
And that's a fact.
What is not a fact is to talk to myself and tell myself I'm not good enough here,
Or I'm not as capable as other people in my team are.
Because somehow they know more than I do.
Therefore they are better than me.
This is an assumption,
This is an imagination.
And this assumption and imagination makes us feel inadequate,
Incomplete,
Is responsible for lower self-esteem or self-confidence.
It's like judging a fish's ability to climb a tree.
The fish might not have the ability to climb the tree,
But that's not the identity of the fish.
Just like that.
We might be inexperienced.
We might not have enough skills.
Or we might not be so evolved in our skills.
But that doesn't mean we are not capable.
And if someone else is better at those skills than we are,
And there's always someone who's better at something or the other than we are,
That doesn't make them smarter or better than us.
I'm not saying this from a place of arrogance.
But I'm trying to explore this from a place of being equal at some deep level.
Our skills is not our identity.
Our lack of skills is definitely not a shortcoming of our identity.
Someone being better at their skills is not a testimonial of them being better than us or smarter than us.
Sometimes if you do something longer than someone else,
You get better at it.
Sometimes you live longer than someone else.
You know more things.
There's nothing to be proud about or nothing to feel bad about,
Depending on which end of the spectrum you are.
If we can see this clearly,
That I am not my work,
I am not what I do or can do or can't do.
If we can see this clearly,
We can stop feeling inadequate,
Incomplete,
Anxious.
You think I'm doing?
I'm not saying it's not inherent in our nature to evolve,
To improve,
To become better at skills,
To become better at actions.
We should,
We should attempt to live a better life,
To speak better words,
To encourage better thoughts,
To eat better food,
To celebrate harder,
Healthier,
More inclusive,
To solve better problems,
To do things in an extraordinary way.
And that's human life.
And we are all capable of doing that based on the cards that we are dealt with.
I might not be interested in sports or chess,
But I am interested in doing this,
In being able to share my experience more clearly with better analogies,
With fewer words,
In a more coherent way.
If that doesn't make me better,
Then someone who can't,
If they followed the same life experiences that I did,
They would be doing exactly the way I am doing it.
We should strive to improve our skills,
But we should strive equally hard,
If not harder,
To differentiate the striving to improve skills with the striving to improve ourselves.
Imagine yourself being a baby,
Old enough to know that you are a baby,
Maybe a toddler,
But not old enough to mistake your skills for yourself.
You can't do much when you are a toddler.
So at that time,
Did you lack anything,
Even though you didn't know how to speak,
How to write,
How to live life in this complicated world?
Yet you were a complete bundle of joy.
You were the happiest.
The self-esteem issues,
The lack of confidence started creeping in as we started comparing ourselves with the lack of the skills that we have.
So every time you get distracted into thinking that I am my skills,
I'm not good enough,
I'm not worthy enough,
Or they are better than me,
They are definitely smarter than me,
Know that we all started in the exact same way,
Stripped off our skills,
And then the skills got added on based on individual life experiences and how we processed those life experiences.
And if you want to go a little more morbid way,
We are all going to land up in the exact same place as well,
Stripped of our skills.
Then how can we say that we are better or inferior than someone else if our starting point and ending point is the same?
This is not just a thought experiment.
This can revolutionize our life,
The quality of our life,
The daily happiness that we experience immensely.
The world will benefit from our attitude as well.
We will have more to contribute,
To share.
And as we age,
Our faculties become a bit slower,
Our movements become a little less graceful,
A little less powerful.
This helps us as we enter that phase of aging to have the same peace and happiness that we can have from this attitude today.
So that we are not rowing our old age,
Reminiscing,
Oh I could do this in my past.
I cannot do it now.
Comparison can stay at the level of skills and at the level of faculties,
But not at the level of you.
When we were born,
Our parents didn't think of us as incomplete beings.
That they need to add stuff to,
To make us eligible to live this life.
Neither did we think that way for our kids.
But somehow we do it to ourselves due to lack of clarity.
You are not your work.
You are not what you do.
You are not your skills.
We should always strive to improve our skills.
Knowing very well that I am complete just the way I am.
I hear someone say very often,
You are a work in progress and a masterpiece at the same time.
Thank you.
