...and then, I stopped judging everyone

Whenever I’m sad because of others judging (misjudging) me, I feel frustrated and furious that why are they forming assumptions and opinions when they don’t know my whole story? But after a bit of introspection, I realized one thing and asked myself ‘Don’t I do the same sometimes?’

If you try to think about it, you’d find countless examples when you must have judged others without knowing their whole story.

For example:

Whenever we see any successful person, we automatically assume that he must be hardworking, super talented, ethical, and N number of positive things. We attribute all the good qualities to that person.

But whenever we see an average person or say a person whom the world considers as a “failure”, we again assume that he must be lazy, unmotivated, dumb, and N number of negative qualities.

In short, we assume that the external circumstances of a person is followed by his efforts only.

But reality is far from this. See, we make a mistake by believing that the result of equation is determined by the things which are in our hand only. In life, there are also number of things to the left side of equation which are beyond our hand.

Let me explain it with the help of diagram shown below. Observe it carefully.

 

The diagram represents conditions of two persons which consists of two lines and few boxes. The bottom line is the start line, the green box represents variables like family to which a person is born, privileges like family wealth, better opportunities, etc. The red box represents talent or passion possessed by a person and the black box indicates variable which is in the hand of a person, i.e. efforts or hard work. Note that each box has different height, which means the height is proportional to the amount of a particular variable. The line at the top represents a limit above which a person is said to be leading a respected or successful life. For the sake of simplicity, I have named it as escape line as above that level, a person would be able to escape the lower level of life.

Now let’s discuss the situation of Person 1.

You can see that as the height of green box is more in this case, Person 1 is born to wealthy parents who are well educated and have good contacts.

He wants to become an entrepreneur. Moreover, he is also very talented. His parents has influential contacts. They taught him from the very young age that what he needs to do to become an entrepreneur. So he got the guidance as well. They had the resources to provide him a quality education. Now think that how hard it would be for him to succeed and lead a comfortable life? Not much, because he is born in a well to do family and his parents have the resources. So he has got the right environment to flourish, and talent to make it easier.

Let’s come to Person 2 now:

He also wants to become an entrepreneur. Now call it his bad luck or whatever, but he is born to poor parents who can barely make their ends meet. The environment in his home is very toxic as his parents are fighting most of the time. As a result, he is not able to focus on his studies and gets bad grades. After his graduation, he doesn’t have a privilege to chase his dream and start a business as he has a responsibility to feed his parents. So he starts a job with a below average pay as he didn’t have good grades. He works damn hard but no matter how much efforts he puts in, it’d be immensely hard for him to reach that escape line as he didn’t have other variables going for him.

Now see the right most side in the diagram. It shows that if Person 2 had born with the same privileges as Person 1 and had got the right guidance, resources, he would have been far ahead than Person 1 as he is more hard working.

These are just hypothetical examples but if you see around, you’d find countless similar examples.

But what we should learn from above diagram is we should not judge a person by his current situation or end result, but rather how much efforts he is putting in. Because situation of any person is a combined result of variables which are beyond his control and which are in his control. If you want to judge him at all, then please judge him by the variables which are in his control and not by his result. Because result don't define a person’s character but his efforts do.

So from the next time, whenever you see a person who is not so successful, don’t assume things and give him labels like lazy, unsuccessful but try to understand his circumstances and appreciate him for whatever he has done till now. This may not help him to succeed but would surely bring a smile to his face for being kind and considerate.

 

This is why you can't work hard

Do you ever find yourself in a state where you can't work hard despite knowing that it is the need of the hour?

Off course you have!

In fact, everyone of us have gone through the same at least once in our life.

You get motivated to do something...

You decide to go for it...

You set specific goals...

You make a plan to make it happen...

You begin with all your enthusiasm but all the motivation is gone in between and there.... exactly there you give up when you don't see any results and get demotivated.

It shouldn't happen, right?

I mean you know what needs to be done,

You have all the resources to do it,

You have made your mind to do it

Yet for some reasons, after some time or attempts, you give in and you are back to where you started.

The point is, what causes this?

I know the reason behind this from my experience.

I think the major reason we can't work hard or find it difficult to work consistently is we are not clear WHY we should do it in the first place!

You see where we get it wrong?

Lack of clarity about the reason

Let's understand it by an example:

Assume you are in a college and you want to get placed in your college placements.

You know what you need to do for this:

study hard, maintain a good mark sheet throughout your college, prepare for interviews.

But how many students from your batch manage to crack this code?

Only a handful, right?

While a majority of the students don't get any job offers.

So what is the reason behind this?

Lack of talent?

I don't think so, because all the students are in the same college so it's safe to assume that they have at least the intellectual ability to crack the initial tests if they put enough efforts.

In fact, I have even seen the most intelligent one not getting placed and the average making it through!

Lack of time?

Everyone gets 24 hours in the day, no more...no less

So what is the reason?

The main factor here is the clarity.

From my personal experience, I can say for sure that generally the ones who get placed have the strong reasons and clarity about why they need to get placed.

For some, it might be money,

For some, it may be their dream company or job.

But everyone of them have one thing in common, they know WHY they need to get placed.

Thus, the clarity is the thing which sets them apart from the ones who couldn't make it and not intelligence, having extra time or anything of that.

This just doesn't apply to one thing. It's true for any aspect of our life.

If you have enrolled for gym and find it difficult to maintain discipline, then be clear about WHY you want to go to the gym.

The reason might be to be healthier

 or 

To feel positive

 or

To attract hot girls

It might be anything but be clear about it and then see how easy it becomes!

Why having a reason is important in life?

Whenever you start something, if you are clear about why you want to do or achieve something, you don't need external motivation to perform the required steps.

What really happens is since you are clear about your why, it is less likely that you'd be influenced by other factors that would distract you.

The surprising thing is, you can use this clarity to beat the masses who are more smart or luckier than you but don't have the clarity.

Many folks believe that they need to be intelligent to become successful in a particular field. Which is false. 

I'm not saying intelligent is not required. It surely helps. But it's not the deciding factor.

Coming back to the point, let's say you are average and want to become successful in a particular field. 

You don't have a kick start but you have one asset to your side, CLARITY. 

If you are clear about your WHY, it'd be much easier for you to figure things out in the process. You just have to start. In this era of internet, you have all the required information at just one click.

See the big companies around you and observe their owners and founders. Do you think that they possess more technical knowledge than the thousands of smart employees who work for them? 

Hell no!

The reason why those SMART people work for founders is that they had the vision and knew why they wanted to start a particular thing.

So from now on, whenever you find it difficult to take required steps, don't doubt your abilities or change plan or overthink anything. Because these are not the root causes. The main problem lies in not having clarity. So just sit down and think "Why do I need to do this?", "Why doing this will help me?", "How is it going to make my life better?"

I'm pretty sure that once you are able to answer all these questions clearly, the rest will fall in place.

Just remember that before starting anything new, instead of making perfect plan or second guessing your abilities, if you put even half of those efforts in making your reasons to begin stronger, you'd be in  much better state.