Not many moons back, I had constantly asked myself this question - why do bad things happen to good people? And promptly, I would pacify myself by quoting Newton’s Law of Attraction “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”.
Grumbling, watering my grudges and ranting a long list of dissatisfactions is how I used to spend my time. And playing the part of ‘The Great Indian Woman" came naturally to me. If I had to define my attitude, I’m Okay, you are not Okay!
When Drama bored me, I switched my focus to Karma. Karma was such a haven to hide. Then, there was this phase of telling “We reap what we sow”, conveniently hiding behind the cloak of spirituality, invisible forces of nature and accepting life as it comes. Years passed by in this unproductive, unsatisfactory behaviour until the day when all the juice within me dried up.
The mistakes & the sufferings!
I did not practice assertiveness. I did not have the good sense to utilize the words No.
I thought being compassionate, obliging, understanding and sympathetic was all that was needed to be a good human.
I believed that if I kept on doing good, I would eventually be rewarded with the good.
I never took feedbacks from people. Questions like these never got an answer - Did my act of goodness make any difference in their lives? Was my interference or service needed?
I forgot to live for myself and lived for others. I went overboard in my acts/gestures, overworked and got tired frequently.
Karma was put on a pedestal and became the deciding factor for all the happenings in my life. The minute I got an inkling of bad, I would immediately over-perform full-throttle putting myself on the fifth gear, to be sometimes rewarded with fragments of the Good.
Most times, I wanted to prove a point. The competitive mode was active. The question before any job/activity always was - is this challenging enough?
Playing the victim was easy then & the coping skills were nil. I avoided conflicts at any cost and focused on peace.
I was very modest in expressing my needs, wants and desires. I never used specific words to ask/ seek and ended up almost always hurt as expectations were not met.
What I perceived as good, was most often not the right good for others
Feeling ill-treat and misinterpreted?
It was not my job to go all out and help somebody achieve their good. No wonder I felt ill-treated.
I noticed that sometimes people were jealous of my capabilities and put me down intentionally.
I was consistently submissive, adaptable, compromising. This came across as my core nature and, voila I was taken for granted.
I know now that insensitive people in this world find immense pleasure in taking advantage of people like me.
I was often misinterpreted because each individual has his or her set of values and ethics different from mine.
Every individual has his/her load of troubles, frustrations and misery. It invariably gets unload on to someone and if you happen to be passing by at that given time and place, a platter full of bad is surely on your cards.
When I did a self-assessment, it was clear that I had sometimes invariably hurt the sentiments of people with my tone or body language. It was thereby misinterpreted as rude and inhospitable.
Tools I use to acknowledge that Life is Fair!
Life is indeed fair.
the mantra to good like work hard - relationship, social settings and work.
No more comparing my life to that of others.
Repeatedly tell me that it’s okay to say No.
Stopped playing the victim, stopped watering my grudges and stopped complaining.
Disabled the expectations meter and focused more on the art of giving than on getting.
Journaling is always a useful tool. I started maintaining a list of the bad. I invested my time in introspecting and finding an alternative to minimize the intensity of each bad.
Accepting that I would not always be in a win-win situation changed my outlook towards life.
I stopped playing the martyr.
Understood and practiced Minimalism.
Is life fair? I say Fair is where you get Cotton Candy...
Live for the moment, live for yourself.
Admit, accept, adapt, organize, learn, unlearn.
Written by- Sheeca Ganapathy
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