Why bother on what people are saying?

I told a dejected friend that “life is not how people look at you but it is how you look at yourself”. He was dejected after being criticized by his boss for not competent and so forth and getting a poor rating for his appraisal for being “young” and not able to perform his duty as what expected from him.

Coincidentally this morning, there was a report on the Stars saying that employers consider fresh graduates as liabilities and would prefer to hire experienced and skilled professionals who can bring instant returns.

We all have gone through the process in a working life. We were all young before and joined a company with a paper qualification but with limited skills and knowledge but over the years acquired the skills and other requirements to be a competent worker, earning our living. But it doesn’t mean that everything will be a smooth sailing process. You may be thinking that with a degree in hand, you can accomplish a lot of things in your life and rise up to the rank, sitting up at a high position in a company and earning big money.

Sometimes, there are so many twists and turns come along the way and you need to bow a bit if the pressure is too great, just like bamboo, when the winds are strong, they bow but when the winds are over, they get straightened back. Just be resilient and the difficult moment will be over.

A poor rating by your boss probably mean that you would not get a good bonus or increment but it should not affect your internal peace. Come on mate, even your parents will have some preferences on your brother or sister so what more you expect from your boss?

As my friend was so down with the comments said by his boss, I then told him that “life is not how people look at you but how you look at yourself”. We bound to come across many challenges in working life. Your boss may not like you, or your colleagues hate you or your students wrote something bad about you. All these can demoralize a person but we need to keep our conscience clear that so long that we are not doing anything wrong, such adverse comments, criticisms, gossiping and so forth should not disturb our inner peace.

I advised him to go for a movie over the weekend and recommended him to watch the Avengers and hoping that he could gain some strength after seeing how the superhero settling down their differences and ego to save the world. I told him even the Prime Minister was also receiving some sarcastic reception from Bersih supporters during his working visit to England and what more the ordinary guys like you and me could expect? Don’t be so silly to expect everyone will like you even though you have done your part 100%.

We do not have the capability to please everyone but at least we can please ourselves by not being disturbed by all these nuisances created by other people.