the road to being misunderstood

- Ritvvij Parrikh
Tel Aviv, Israel

Bills Gates wrote 'The Road to Success'... I m writing 'The Road to being Misunderstood!' Back in school, one of my professors always said – “To do something right, learn to do it wrong first!” Trust me, back then I found him – NUTZ!!! But today thinking back… it does make sense.

So, going by this law, if I had to talk about success… I would be writing on failure! And since my idea is to write different ways of NOT to be misunderstood… I am writing on - “The road to – Being Misunderstood!!” It is full of all the wrong ways you do. But again the idea is that next time, you face a problem and somewhere within your thinking you find the following… Trust me your thought process needs to be changed!

Here, I am going to talk about a hypothetical character – Mr. Mercury. First thought that would be crossing your mind would be – What a name? Well… It’s not a name exactly. I couldn’t think of one so while typing this article, I just happened to gaze up and saw my Mercury MS-440 Speakers… “Tada!!” I thought… “Here we have a name… Mr. Mercury, so it will be”. + Mercury being an element tht rises with rising temp can relate to a short tempered person too..

All that is going to follow hereon… is nothing but the thought process of our Mr. Mercury, when faced by different scenarios and problems in his day to day life.

The accounts of Mr. Mercury’s thought process that I am going to represent are quite a hyperbole in themselves. They are just intended to give the superlative effects of some possible thoughts that might cross our mind.

Case Scenario 1: Mr. Mercury has missed an opportunity!

Mr. Mercury had a promotion chance. If he could clinch this big deal, a deal so important that it could bail the company out of the present crisis it resides in. Everyone is expecting the deal to go smoothly for he is but an accomplished person and smart personality. Amongst all this expectation, Mr. Mercury fails!!!

Mr. Mercury’s thought process:

He knows he has missed the bus and its going to cost the company. He knows apart from disappointing himself, he has disappointed his superiors & co-workers who believed in him, he has disappointed even those subordinates who looked up to him. Apart from all this… he desperately needed a raise to meet his family expenses. His family too is disappointed. Everything has just gone wrong!

Disappointed that he is… He stands beside himself with chagrin (disappointment) alone trying to figure the reason for his undoing. He spends hours and hours trying to construe () what went wrong only to misconstrue () the whole thing.

Explanations most apposite () to himself are drawn by his astute () mind. This repeated question-answer in the mind makes him almost callous () to the true reasons of the mishap. This failure appalls () his mindset into doubting his own capabilities.

To cover up for his failure, he starts building up an aegis () of false reasons and arguments around himself. He starts using casuistry (subtle but false reasoning) to justify his failure. Mr. Mercury’s mind belabors with his conscious so much so that it too finally accepts the crap – that he is incompetent.

Doubting yourself and your capabilities is the first big mistake that you can ever come with. This generally happens when you let such failures pressurize you. The best way to deal with such a situation is not think about it all together for sometime.

His mindset gets so full of negativity that it becomes too carping (fault finding unnecessarily) to really be able to appreciate his strengths - his positive points.

What follows post self-doubt is misery and negativity.

Now at the end of it… he, his mindset, and approach towards life has become so negative that it creates a bedlam () in his mind. And slowly but steadily he becomes a denizen () to the dark alleys of his mind. He starts doubting everyone for everything… and he accuses them of doubting his capabilities.

Here after, hence forth whatever he does, whatever happens around him, it only denigrates () his views about others & about himself.

This calumny (false accusations) strains his relationships with others. The calumny occurs due to the conclusions that his mind has reached to on the basis of conjectures. () And much to his consternation, () due to this repeated crap that he is giving his loved ones, they too are distancing themselves. And again, his misconstruing mind comes up with the idea that life is conjuring () up problems for him nowhere.

Such misinterpretations can only take place with the connivance () of his dying conscious. He starts commiserating () with himself and the negativity just builds up.

Never get into the habit of having pity for yourself as it can actually make you incompetent.

Amongst all this, when finally a true comrade steps up to help him out and explain him his faults in thinking… Mr. Mercury lashes at him in a fit of rage as a conflagration () in a fireworks factory.

Now every time that he fails… his chimerical () mind always comes up with false reasons bailing him out of the true reasons of failure. It truly makes him – incompetent.

His demeanor () has changed now forever… And he locked in the cycle of doing things wrongly and bailing himself out of it with false reasons. The denouement of this continuous cycle is but only more misery and negativity.

The idea of this article was to show each one of you ALL the POSSIBLE WRONG WAYS to think.... when you face a crisis situation! So once you know ALL the wrong ways... whenever you face the situations... YOU SHOULD MONITOR YOUR MIND FOR THE FOLLOWIN.. N if its on tht TRACk.. then DEviate accordingly :)