Know Your Worth : Stop Thinking, Start Doing

by N.K. Sondhi

Without knowing our strengths and weaknesses, it is difficult to figure out what is within our reach. And if we do not aim high, we can never challenge and overcome our weaknesses.

“You cannot achieve anything without making sacrifices.”

You are a human being and you can do whatever you wish to do, provided you first recognize your own worth.”

“God, our creator, has stored in our minds and personalities, great potential strength and ability. We must tap and develop these powers.”

The first step to knowing ourselves is to have trust and belief in ourselves, but we often lose confidence at the first stumbling block. We start blaming our circumstances, unfavorable conditions, and start accepting the failures as our limitations. We blame ourselves for not being capable of handling situations, without really exploring different perspectives.

The day we realize our true worth and the fact that we are capable of transcending the physical, emotional, and mental limitations we have imposed upon ourselves, we will certainly succeed where we had previously failed. So far, we chose weakness. When we choose power, we will positively become whatever we have chosen to be.

We do not appreciate ourselves enough. On the contrary, we are quick to find faults with everything we do.

All the powers that you need to emerge a victor are already within you. You need to have faith in them. The creator has equipped you with all the weapons you need to fight any situation, and they will come to your rescue whenever there is a need, provided you believe in them.

The biggest factor, in fact, is our own inhibitions, especially once we are grown-ups. We are afraid of new experiences, afraid of disappointment, afraid of failure, afraid of making fools of ourselves. And this fear keeps us from taking advantage of opportunities to gather new experiences.

one can never really truly understand oneself by remaining in a shell. Unless you experience new things, you can never experience a new you. Unless you take risks, you can never transcend your normal, day-to-day existence.

Dealing with failures is not easy. It is like a double-edged sword. If you take failures too seriously, they may end up crushing you. On the other hand, if you take them too lightly, you will not learn any lessons from them, which means that the risk that you took would go to waste. So, you need to recognize failures for what they are – failures. Nothing more, nothing less. If you fail in a challenge, it does not mean that you yourself are a failure. This is the most common mistake we commit. Failing a challenge means that you failed that challenge. You need to analyze the situation, see what you could have done better, and move on to the next challenge where you can test your learnings.

Confidence also gives us perseverance – the ability to keep going after a failure. If you haven’t invested in yourself, you are more likely to give up after a failure or two.

The story of this small bird tells us a lot about our own self-confidence and courage. If one road is blocked there are others we can follow. And if there are no new roads, there’s always the earth on which we can make a new road.

In order to discover your strengths and talents, you need to put yourself in situations where you will be forced to go beyond your normal day-to-day existence, do things that you don’t usually do in your daily life. Once you have discovered your strengths, you need to practice relentlessly in order to polish them and become a master.

Don’t wait for life to give you these opportunities, rise up and grab them. This is the only way to fast-track your growth.

drag you down

Therefore, take some time. Realize your strengths and acknowledge your weaknesses. This is all that it takes in most cases to help you achieve your dreams.

When you have your goal in sight, and you know what you have to do and how you have to do it, your entire demeanor changes. You go about your life confidently, and are almost never confused or undecided. It gives you a sense of pride and that shows in how you carry yourself. It gives you a good reason to wake up in the morning.

Without goals, we are all drifters. With goals, we are in charge.

“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it and live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.”

The one single entity that most often keeps us from achieving our full potential is fear – more specifically, fear of failure. No matter how hard we work, no matter how well we handle our jobs, no matter how good we are at it, somewhere deep inside, we have that slight doubt that we are not good enough. This doubt manifests into a fear of failure whenever we take up a challenge. We worry that we will fail to achieve our goal and our friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, even random strangers will see us for the fake people we are.

“You have control over doing your respective duty, but no control or claim over the result. Fear of failure, from being emotionally attached to the fruit of work, is the greatest impediment to success because it robs efficiency by constantly disturbing the equanimity of mind.”

“Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvellous work. The moment you fear, you are nobody. It is fear that is the great cause of misery in the world. It is fear that is the greatest of all superstitions. It is fear that is the cause of our woes, and it is fearlessness that brings heaven even in a moment.”

remember that fear is not reality. Simply by standing up to your fear and facing it boldly, you can conquer it. As human beings, we can never really be free of fear, but we have to learn to get past it.

Anything of value, anything worth doing that’s going to make a real impact, often brings up fear. Whenever we do try to start something new, doubts and insecurities rear up in our mind. To combat such thoughts, we have to come out of our comfort zone shedding our fears and doubts.

From the above example, it is clear that we must have faith in our own powers. But it is also important to note that our state of mind is like a magnet. If we send out negativity into the Universe, we will get negativity in return. Whatever we think of, whatever we feel, has its own magnetic force. All our feelings like love, fear, anger, happiness, joy, and gratitude etc. create a magnetic pull that attracts actions, plans, and events towards us. Similarly fear of something creates a magnetic force that will attract more of what we fear towards us. This isn’t because of any supernatural power. It is common sense.

As per motivational public speaker and author Brian Tracy: “Every time you repeat the words ‘I can do it’ with conviction, you override your fear and increase your confidence. By repeating this affirmation over and over, you can eventually build your courage and confidence to the point where you are unafraid.”

Ex-President APJ Abdul Kalam has suggested speaking these five lines to ourselves every morning: I am the best. I can do it. God is always with me. I am a winner. Today is my day.

To make this point clearer let us consider the example of ants. These tiny creatures keep moving forward without worrying about any imaginary obstacles that may come their way. They deal with obstacles when they actually come face to face with them. And in most cases, even creatures as tiny as ants are able to find their way around the obstacles. We can learn a great deal from these tenacious creatures. These tiny insects demonstrate the main principle of life, the very mantra to success. They teach us to carry on without fear. They teach us that no obstacle is too big and if we do come across it, we will be able to find our way around it.

Shri Sathya Sai Baba has said: “You are not one person, but three: the one you think you are; the one others think you are; the one you really are.”

In fact, ego keeps us wrapped in a kind of cocoon, oblivious to the world outside our own. It makes us separated by preventing us from seeing the views of other people. It also prevents us from seeing the pain or needs of others. We shall be able to break out of our prison of Ego only if we begin to understand that there is more to this life than our own experience, our own education, our own thinking and start accepting the bare fact that we are all influenced by the actions of those around us.

“The Ego is only an enemy because it is wild, uncontrolled, and primitive, like many other aspects of the untrained mind. You do not kill a problem dog, you teach it to behave! Do not expect a problem dog to become good if you neglect it and berate it. Without Ego in its most basic form, it is impossible to have any desire, make any decision, have any awareness, or possess any of the critical qualities of a humanely developed person.”

Inferiority complex is the lack of self-esteem and self-confidence, and is characterized by the abundance of self-doubt, uncertainty, and the feeling of not measuring up to standards. When such feelings take over a person’s life and prevent him/her from functioning normally, then it can be termed as inferiority complex.

Some scholars are of the view that inferiority complex may stem from our childhood. At times without even realizing this, parents sow the seeds of low self-esteem in their children. It isn’t only about being strict with them, it is also about other subtle actions such as comparing our child to other children, using negative statements when talking about our child, or by not demonstrating faith in their ability to achieve things. Most parents don’t even realize that children who are at an impressionable age are very sensitive to these subtle signals. And these early impressions are imprinted on their sub-conscious mind.

“While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, another is busy making mistakes and becoming superior.”

“The fastest runner doesn’t always win the race and the strongest warrior doesn’t always win the battle.”

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

“A matchstick before burning other things burns itself. Our anger is also like a matchstick. Before destroying others, it destroys us.”

“The man who is angry at the right things and with the right people, and, further, as he ought, when he ought, and as long as he ought, is praised.”

“When you sow a thought you reap an action, when you sow an action you reap a habit, when you sow a habit you reap a character and when you sow a character you reap a destiny. Thoughts are like seeds. You cannot sow the seed of one plant and get another: thistles will never produce daffodils! When your thoughts are positive, powerful, and constructive, your life will reflect this.”

“As a single footstep does not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

Martin Cooper who invented mobile phone,

Swami Vivekanand has said: “We are what our thoughts have made us, so take care about what we think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live, they travel far… Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals place them day and night before you and out of that will come great work.”

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him… The mind is everything. What you think you become.”

What goes around, comes around and so does negativity.

It is easier to find faults with others than it is to make an effort to see the positive side of everything. Negative thinking has an immediate, destructive impact on our life. Negative thoughts distract us from our positive growth and from achieving our goals. This ends up making us feel even worse.

However, our past is not an example nor is it a guide to our current life or the future. It is just a bundle of events that happened. We must leave it at that, while extracting our lessons from it. If we have bright, evergreen and a vibrant outlook towards life today, we must look forward to living a brighter, greener, and more vibrantly abundant life tomorrow.

Life can be framed within triple “E” – “Yesterday is Experience, Today is Experiment, and Tomorrow is Expectation.” Let us use our experience in our experiments and achieve our expectations.

Albert Einstein once said: “Try not becoming a man of success, but rather try to become a man of Value.”

Our attitude is the product of both positive and negative emotions and energies. Being positive means having a positive attitude. An attitude is a forceful tool in our hands that can cause both success and failure.