Don’t know how to live. Part 2
The first priority is competence. This society does not value goodness without competence.
A person is very good, but he doesn’t know how to drive. No one is likely to give him a job as a driver. A person knows how to drive, but he is not a good person. Even then, there is a chance that he will get a job.
This means that goodness is necessary, but goodness without competence is useless. When does competence develop? If you keep trying to impress others, your competence will not develop. Your whole life will be spent trying to impress others.
You must increase your competence. You must use logic in your studies. Whether it’s giving counseling, doing work, or holding a job, or making pottery, you must work using logic. For example, a person studying accounts must understand what a balance sheet is, where to write profits, and where to write losses. All this must be learned using logic. If you don’t do that and instead just memorize things to get marks and try to impress someone, you don’t know if they will be impressed or not, but your life will be ruined.A girl consulted a psychologist, saying, “I’m becoming the odd one out. I can’t live in this society.” The psychologist advised her, “Even if you are different, if you improve your abilities and your skills become useful to this society, they themselves will come looking for you.
You should never try to impress a particular person. There was a boy who tried to impress a girl by giving her gifts and other things. The girl said in one sentence, ‘No matter what you do, I will not accept you.’ Let’s put aside whether that girl was good or not.
Now, if he focuses on improving his skills and works hard instead of trying to impress her, hundreds of girls like her might be impressed.
You should never try to impress relatives. They have known us since childhood. They have a preconceived opinion about us. Even if we achieve great success, they will try to criticise us in some way. Or they might say that we succeeded because the planets were favourable or because of luck.
Some people might say, “You have become successful,” and so on. Even then, we shouldn’t get carried away by their praise.
If you think that we learn from the criticism of relatives,Just because they are finding fault doesn’t mean it’s true. No matter where the criticism comes from, we keep trying to impress them. Similarly, ‘Mom, I’ll do exactly as you say.’ If we continue doing this, we will get trapped in OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder).
Do relatives criticise us constructively? No.
There is a doctor who lives in Australia. When her mother-in-law called and asked what she fed the baby, she said she gave her an omelette. The mother-in-law said, “Do you have any sense? What’s the need for an omelette? You could have just boiled the egg; the proteins and vitamins wouldn’t go anywhere.” She had no knowledge about it, nor did her mother-in-law. She might have said that to satisfy her ego and assert her dominance.how to live how to live how to live
After six months had passed, she boiled eggs again and fed them to the children. When her mother-in-law called, she said she had fed them an omelette. She had forgotten what she had said earlier to her mother-in-law. Now she says, “How will they digest boiled eggs? You could have made an omelette instead.”
All the relatives keep giving advice like this, even if they don’t know anything about the matter. If we keep following all their advice, we won’t be able to get any work done.
Let’s assume that in some cases, they are criticising because they actually know something. You can learn from that and make changes in your work. This is where you need to apply your logic.
