Is life being unfair to you?
Periods of tough times are bound to befall us whenever we try to improve ourselves. We naturally take it within our stride and keep on performing our best.
But what do you do if toiling all day doesn't amount to any results, and to rub salt on your wound, your peers/competition who equally does the same work as you seem to be in a much better position than you?
It could be the assignment you’re dying to complete, the thesis that you’ve painstakingly researched on or the business you’ve been struggling to expand to the next level.
Paraphrasing on a lesson note from Jim Rohn, you become frustrated with your life and seek to find out where you did wrong. And when you cannot find an answer, you wronged yourself by giving up and blamed everything in life for being unfair.
To admit defeat is already bad enough. Complaining about your circumstance is striking nails to the motivational coffin.
It’s all about perceptions
Life is actually simple. It teaches something about ourselves.
Every single one of us is born in this world with a unique set of circumstance; it can be location, generation, status, etc. We have to understand that no one is truly identical. For every disadvantage that you have, there is also a learning side to it.
For example, those who are born wealthy might enjoy the luxuries of life, but they might lack the survival knowhows and the resilience, once their wealth are taken away.
You might live in the countryside where life is peaceful and good food grows from the land, as opposed to the highly stressful city life with no certainty for the next salary to come.
Living under oppression is bad (e.g. wars, civil unrest), but you cherish your relationships with one another as opposed to living under good times with opportunists.
Notice that for all the above, it is all about how you perceive the given situation. We need to replace the filters of our lenses with the ones that seek the good in our situation.
Being a whiner
When we have an undue expectation of something and it doesn’t work out after you have a considerable investment in it, we decide to complain.
In other words, we give up our control. We allow someone or some event to toss us around.
Because to complain is easy. When we complain, we direct our responsibilities at something else. We expect “justice” to be served, lounge at a recliner and hopefully, someone assists us to get what we want.
“I worked hard on this special project. I deserve that promotion.”
“Why does he get all the rewards when we did the same kind of work?”
“If only I have the capital, my business startup would surely take off.”
You might be familiar with the above narrative. Notice that the statements above are actually one-sided and smacks of entitlement.
These are the thoughts that disempower us. When we conjure these statements in our minds, what we are actually saying is that we want life to be biased, according to our favor*.
“We want life to be unfair, according to our favor.”
Get off your high horse
If though by chance we are given wealth and fame, we see life as blissful and think that we must have done something good in life to deserve this. And therefore, those who are much lesser off must have done something wrong to deserve it.
We don’t say this aloud, but our thoughts reinforce this twisted belief. We don’t really care much about others as long as we are doing well.
Wrapping up
Life might seem unfair to us when we compare our situation with others on a certain scenario. However, when we deeply reflect on this, you might come to accept that there are many facets in our situation which we have no knowledge of where one might have an advantage over the others.
After all, our existence itself is a big debate amongst ourselves.
Ultimately, I find life as a test of one’s character experiencing the unique challenges in their own respective microcosm of the world.
What do you think?
