#AtoZChallenge- Introspection

Jeanne just got out from a meeting. She came to know that the promotion she was eagerly waiting for just got out of her hands. After a busy day of realizing that all her hard work was in vain, she headed out looking for a cab. She could not stop thinking about her missed promotion. How her plans of building a house upon her promotion got shattered and how life has always been unfair to her. While she was already tired after a long day, her retrospection only added to her discomfort. She couldn’t sleep all night as she was busy blaming her luck. She was unable to understand how she never got what she expected from life.

Jeanne was a dreamer. She was also an achiever who had the courage to follow her dreams. But something always hindered her from relishing her accomplishments. Too much retrospection? Or being too self-centered? She wasn’t aware. She always pinned high hopes and expectations from life. It could be her dream school, career or a relationship or her to-do list of life events. Nothing came to life as planned. Nothing worked in her favor according to her.

The next morning, Jeanne’s mother noticed her puffy red eyes and inquired what went wrong. Her mother was accustomed to Jeanne’s mentality of always complaining and worrying about her fate. She tried to console Jeanne of how everything will be alright, but in vain. As usual, Jeanne whined-  “Why me?! Why do things happen to me?”

Exhausted by her daughter’s outlook and worried about her irrelevant misery, her mother said, “Nothing happened to you! Not being promoted is not the end of the world! You should understand by now that not everything in life happens as you plan. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Things happen for a reason. You will be promoted when you really need to be.”

“But I worked so hard for it, hoping to start the house. I’ve waited enough now”, Jeanne sighed.

“I know you worked hard dear. There are too many people working way harder than you just to have a basic roof over their head. Stop this attitude of blaming fate and cursing life for not going as you planned. The key is to be thankful for your blessings and accomplishments, whenever you feel dejected”, her mother explained.

“And why do you restrict yourself to start something only when you accomplish something? What’s wrong in starting the house now without the promotion? It may take longer to repay but that should be okay“, she added. Jeanne nodded in agreement.

“If you get promoted next year, you could repay faster as well. Either way, it’s the same. The promotion has nothing much to do here. Stop fretting about why things don’t happen as you want and learn to accept and solve your situations, as worry cannot make you any better“, she emphasized.

After this conversation with her mother, Jeanne felt lighter. She had been piling up the agony of blaming life and feeling unfortunate than she actually was. She slowly realized that she needed to monitor and mold her thought process away from the idea of feeling like a victim of her life. She was amazed at how a positive perspective of a situation could completely change the way she felt about it. After all, all she needed was introspection and not retrospection, she realized.