Recognise your strengths - Ask your counsellor Q& A column

[The following column written by me appeared in the Deccan Herald Education Supplement on July 8, 2015]

Dear Madam,
I am a I PUC graduate with an overall percentage of 98.33%. My aim is to get into one of the IITs. But the problem with me is that I have a lot of negative points. I am a very bad time manager, lazy and unsystematic. I am also a procrastinator. I don’t study regularly and my work piles up at the end of the week. When the exams approach, I start studying late nights, trying to finish my portion at the last moment. 

For the I PU exam also, I skipped many topics as there wasn’t enough time. I scored well only because of sheer luck. But I believe I am capable and have immense potential. At present, I am attending classes in a coaching institute. In the first week I was full of energy and enthusiasm. But as the weeks passed, I have become casual, and I fear that because of this habit, I will not be able to perform up to my potential. 

So at the end, I feel bad that I have wasted precious time. To lift my spirits, I have read motivational books, but they don’t seem to work. Please help me in performing well and deleting my negative points.

SP

Dear SP

You are not the only person in the world who has negative points. Each person has negative points and in that you are not unique. However, each person also has positive points, along with the negative, and it is important that we recognize and acknowledge our positive points because that is what makes us feel stronger and better about ourselves and gives us the energy required to achieve our goals. 

Unfortunately most of us are only too quick to recognize our weaknesses and make the fatal mistake of thinking we don’t have any strengths. So I am not too concerned about the fact that you have weaknesses. I would be more concerned about the fact that you are not recognizing your strengths. You are attributing your successes to sheer luck, discounting any role that you and your strengths may have played in achieving them. 
I would urge you to stop here and take some time to take stock of your strengths. And don’t stop at discovering and uncovering only one or two. Try and dig out at least ten because I am sure you will have at least ten, provided you allow yourself to look for them.
If you can find more than ten, then even better. You don’t need to delete all your negative points. You need to know them, and then decide on which ones you want to modify and how you want to modify them. And as you start recognizing your positive points, the burden of the negative points will automatically come down. If with all your negative points that you mention you are able to get a score of 98.33%, you are obviously not giving enough recognition to your positive points and strengths. I am also not sure how much more will convince you that you are indeed achieving your potential!
Watch out from falling into the trap of constant dissatisfaction, no matter what the result. I hope you are not caught in the vicious cycle of never doing good enough! At some point of performance, you need to be able to take stock and enjoy your success and feel a sense of satisfaction at what you have achieved. All the best.

Dear Madam,
I am studying in II PUC. All my classmates in college think that I am completely unfashionable. All the other children laugh at me at school and say my clothes are completely unfashionable. I feel really stupid. I ask my parents to buy me better clothes but they say they don’t have enough money. What can I do?

Dear Anonymous,
I hear you say that you feel really stupid, and that is what concerns me. People around you will only reflect back to you what you are feeling about yourself. If you feel insecure, not smart and lacking confidence, then that is what people start thinking about you. And those are the cues that you pick up from your environment which further reinforces what you think about yourself.
Let me help you understand that a little better. You say you ‘feel stupid’. Because of that you may be thinking thoughts like ‘people don’t like me’, ‘I am not smart’, ‘others are smarter than me’, ‘what must the others be thinking of me?’ and so on. Because you are thinking like that you behave meekly, shyly and without confidence, feeling embarrassed about yourself and your clothes. 
Because you behave that way, your friends think you are not dressed fashionably. In reality, it is not your friends that are thinking you are not smart. It is you who is thinking you are not smart, and therefore behaving in a way that makes them say that. 
If you believe in yourself and your capabilities, and feel that you are smart, then your thoughts and behavior will reflect that ‘smartness’ and people will start thinking of you as ‘smart’. Your clothes don’t really have anything to do with smartness. 
You don’t need to be fashionable to be ‘smart’, and if you feel ‘smart’, think ‘smart’ and behave ‘smart’ then dressing fashionably is not that critical. Most people need to be ‘fashionable’ to project an external smartness which may not have anything to do with how smart they truly are. So the bottom line is to believe in yourself. 


Dear Madam
I am currently pursuing my second year engineering (mechanical) in Karnataka. I am from an orthodox family though my thinking is quite free. I have some good friends whom I talk to and spend a lot of time going out and having fun with. The problem is that, 
I do not have any female friends and I hesitate to talk to girls in general. I don't know how to approach a girl and start having a proper conversation. Sometimes I feel that I have to maintain a distance from girls, so that I don’t fall into some unwanted relationship.
M C
Dear M C
Sometimes our social conditioning and family background entrench in us a set of beliefs from which we operate, most of the time unconsciously. You mentioned that your family is conservative and so your hesitation to talking to members of the opposite sex may stem from messages you got around that from your family while growing up.  I urge you to take help in resolving this for yourself, and deep-seated beliefs take time to uncover and then shed off. 
You should either see a counsellor face to face to explore what your fears and anxieties around interacting with girls are based on and how to overcome them. Or you could call the free Parivarthan Counselling Helpline at 080 65333323  to talk to a counsellor who may be able to help you.