To be or not to be!
To be or not to be — William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Act III, Scene I.
That’s a question which occurs and re-occurs in each one of our’s mind. Sometimes we feed it and let go of it at others. Tons of thoughts and to-dos keep running up and down our head. We decide on one thing a day and it starts to sound not so relevant the other day. Baffled with the plethora of thoughts that make no random patterns troubles us.
Toggling and doodling with ‘what’s my story?’ is an ordinary thing I thought, but I learnt it’s an extra ordinary thing in real. Finding ‘patterns from randomness’ is the key. It certainly doesn’t happen within the snap of fingers. Here what I am doing is trying to put that Randomness into words, maybe I see a pattern somewhere. Fear of being judged makes this question all the more tough, but is it nobler in mind to suffer? Sensibly no. We get stuck with the decisions, we get into that deep thinking mode, think of all the what ifs that are contingent. We get torn between what we want to do and what we should, taken a certain point of time into consideration. Family vs career tears us sometimes and at others career vs relationship takes a toll on our lives. We tend to waste our time, energy, efforts, emotions, what not. Still we’re left with neither peace nor any sort of accomplishment.
Question: What is the ultimate solution to this ‘to be or not to be syndrome’?
Is there a solution as such? Well ‘yes’ is the answer but dipped in a ‘no’. Solution that I see, is highly subjective and depends upon one’s own prerogative. I’ve been experimenting a bit with this of late, not that I’ve come out victorious that I’m writing here, but yes a few things that did work for me, I’d like to add those 2 cents from my experience. Again, these may work for some and for others they might prove utterly futile. So here’s what worked for me:
Think of your happiness first
“Will they be okay if I do this?”, “Won’t she feel bad if I take this opportunity?”, “He ‘ll be troubled if I choose to take this job?”, “Dad will not be happy with me pursuing that.”
Such self propagated tirade pulls us down before anyone else nips our decisions. Best is to step back, evaluate how important is that task or decision for our own-self vs all the ‘they’, ‘he’, ‘she’. Even if we score a bit lesser on the importance scale than others do, we got to choose ourself. All those who matter to us, our happiness will matter to them in the long run. Short term stress rip off, leads to a long term sadness. So the key is, keep yourself happy, so you’re able to focus on the loved one’s happiness.
Do not over think
People who are scared of taking decisions, think, re-think, over think, and procrastinate what is to be done today to tomorrow, day after, or maybe never. Overthinking leads to procrastination and procrastination leads to added stress. When we think more than required for a particular task it generally gets spoiled, linking it to ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’ — too many thoughts on the same thing spoil the task.
Plan the change once, act upon it, iterate and reiterate. That’s the way to it!
Today is the day
All we try to avoid is the stress associated to that task/decision, we forget many a times that delayed decisions only make the matters worse.
You want to get out of an abusive relationship, today is the time. A career move, you want to be a creative writer after Btech, go do it today. You want to learn a new skill, awkward for your age, start today, tomorrow you’ll be a day older. Want to write a blog, do it today.
Matter of the fact is, thinking over the same thing day in and out, over and over again will not change any one’s perspective to it, the only thing that changes is time at hand to tackle with those decisions. Key is save on time, let not your parameters of making the decision take a toll on your decisions.
Take tiny steps
Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither does any other great thing happen overnight. Tiny steps, one constructive and progressive move at a time suffices for great results but the point is start somewhere from, just start. Iterating and reiterating helps us make do with our tasks better but they need to be on the canvas to make amendments.
Have courage to face the unpleasant
If I change the city today and new city/country doesn’t welcome me? So, so what? Move on, options are endless.
If I change this job and take up a new one and there too I meet fussy boss?
Ah! There is always a chance to try again and move forward it that again doesn’t work too.
What if he does something bad to himself if I tell him, I want to get out of this relationship?
There are always chances that you have to take, people do understand unfulfilling relationships don’t go long.
It’s all about being ready to face the worse and most of the times, that worse is just in our head. We keep knitting scenarios in our head and the actuality is just not that harsh, it maybe harsher sometimes, but only if we reach the destination will we know it was worth the pain or not. The key is, keep your arsenal ready and act!
Trust your gut
Gut is that faceless, shapeless (but not aimless) sail to our mind’s ship. It does give us hints, suggestions, indications, and how loud it is (or how loud you let it speak) decides if you listen to it or not. But, most of the times, gut knows more about us than we do. If it says, let go, do let go. if it says, try harder do try harder. If it says, screw it and go find a new aim, go find a new one.
I’d like to end with this quote by Mel Robbins:
“Don’t stop untill you’re proud of you”.
But do start, from somewhere :)
This may seem like random philosophy, but it’s a workable one. To be or not to be troubles us each day. Let today be the day that we make a difference.
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