“You are where you are right now because of the actions you’ve taken, or maybe, the inaction you’ve taken.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
This blog is about the impact of inaction in one’s life, and how being in a situation when you are not doing anything productive for a significant period can cost you your confidence, and enthusiasm and sometimes can create self-doubt.
It is said that if you stay inactive, your doubts and fear will come to the fore, and gradually you will become those emotions and you could become a completely opposite person of what you were.
Let me tell you a story about a boy who was so confident and energetic in anything he takes up and how inactivity changed him into a completely different individual.
Samar, a 25yr old individual, when he looks back at his life, finds how confident of a person he used to be during his school days and his confidence could be seen by everyone around him. He was shining in every field, be it academics, sports, or any other. And all of this because he was always so focused on each of his tasks gave him the confidence he needed to excel. But as soon as he finished school and joined college, he started engaging himself in some useless, unproductive activities which seemed to be of great fun in the beginning but gradually they were distracting him from learning and growing productively.
He spent all those years of his college having more fun and wasted his time on less productive stuff and one fine day he came to know about one of his school friends, who was not even close to him in terms of academics or knowledge during his school days, is doing good in his life. And on the other hand, Samar was doing nothing.
This gave Samar the wake-up call which made him feel guilty for wasting precious building years of his life and then started the “Phase of comparison”.
Samar started comparing himself with every other person around him and felt guilty time and again. Gradually he started feeling low on energy and not enough motivated to take up any task. This hampered Samar’s confidence terribly, in a way that he started doubting himself, was not even able to take decisions for himself, and made him feel like a good-for-nothing person.
He started relying on others (his parents, and elders) to take decisions for him as he was not confident enough to do that himself.
Now here are some questions for you to ask yourself:
- If you were in Samar’s position what would be your next step?
- Should one give in to the situation and lose all hope or take that one decision that could pull him from the darkness he is moving towards?
Coming back to the story, here is what Samar did,
Then and there, he took a life-changing decision and did the following things:
1. Took small actions every day.
He took every morning as a new challenge and started with the smallest task such as making up his bed and cooking his own food.
2. Less input, more output. Less passive, more active. Less watching, more doing.
He put a halt to comparing himself with others and started focusing on his own learnings.
3. Created a bucket list and started checking items off. And set goals to work towards.
He made a routine for himself and religiously followed it to get over his old habits of getting into unproductive activities, he started making to-do lists for himself and tried to complete all the tasks which helped him to move forward on the path of self-growth.
4. Realized that getting started is the hardest part.
Samar’s case shows us how stagnating can affect our lives in different ways and can hamper everything around us. Hence, I would suggest you all learn from Samar’s mistakes and don’t let this happen to you.
Everyone may take some breaks off to recharge themselves, and that’s completely fine but not doing anything for a long time can harm you on different levels.
Wishing good luck to all.
Harsh Sabnani
Jaipuria Talks Blog 