The Third Girl.

When I go out and meet people, let's say at a party or at a friend's house, and its people I've just met, my mind does this thing to me. She starts judging. I wouldn't say I judge people the wrong way, in fact I start seeing in them what I think they already do! [and more often than not, they don't.]

So for instance I meet a recently divorced woman in her late twenties. Lets say she's very pretty, well spoken and lauded with two college degrees. I would automatically after conversing with her, begin to see her as someone who will find her Mr. Right in say about a year or two, who would gently propose leading way to a beautiful home and two very lovely kids, a fancy job and a great life. I see complete potential in her to get the things she would want in life quite easily. And then again, as if in auto mode, my mind would remind me how she is lucky and I am not. In my case, there will surely be a lot of turbulence before I attain anything fairly genuine.

Why this turn in thought? What is there in a girl you just met versus a girl you've known all your life?

Why do you so easily wish a person well, and yet find it so difficult to do the same to you? 

I would call this the "Third Person Perspective", or TPP.

I think I need to break this down into points:

1. As most of us know it, the grass is greener on the other side.

 Nobody so far has been able to get into another person's mind and see and feel what they do. I read somewhere once, that you can never feel to the point what another is feeling, you can only pass by that feeling. True to that statement, so you see people from the outside, and based on all their pretenses and what they say, we get a certain "feeling" about how they are and what could potentially hold for them in their future based on their current stature.

2. So as we stand far away from a person, we hold clarity for them in our sight. It's almost like you're watching a movie. 

You know the hero and the heroine will eventually get together, or that the heroine deserves the job she applied for, and you see that she will get it amidst all that confusion surrounding her. But she doesn't! And that's what makes the movie.

Maybe now you're getting the point? 

Sadly, the third person is not sitting inside of us. Hence, that very talented girl you just met who got dumped after ten long years of marriage, or that man who lost all his wealth can't see what we see. Because clarity my friend is someone who's always visiting the neighbour.

3. Now imagine yourself, your whole life, tragedy filled or not, converted into a film. You'll have to simplify it though cos you've got only two hours to showcase your entire life.

Of course you don't know the ending yet, but based on your past and current accounts, you can guess it right? 

And in that moment you're asked to direct it, you'll be forced to sit down and picture your life and your self from a third man's perspective. Right? 

Is it easy? Depends. It depends on how much of yourself you're not trying to hide. That's the tough part. Creating a wholesomeness out of all that can put you into perspective.

4. To filter this well, let's take this step by step:

a. You picture your whole life, starting from when you're a child. The household you're born into. The kind of school you went to. Other kids you made friends with, your parents, their lifestyle, your siblings and all such. 

When I imagine that I mostly get a warmth pass through me.

b. Next I would imagine the time I reached my teens, and that's when my problems would start. Dating was a horror. I never got asked out. I had all the issues a normal teenager had.

When I imagine this, I get a slight chill, not too bad though.

c. Then I picture my college years. That was okay, as I did get good attention, although academically I can't say I did all that well.

Here, I get an OK feeling.

Now one can do this at each turn of their life and feel and picture their whole life until now.

The worst feeling that passes through you will be when you made mistakes that worsened your life, isn't it?

Now that you've pictured everything and you're feeling overwhelmed, stop. 

d. Go back to those certain areas where you felt most horrible. That's where you still hold shame or fear. I would say from all my past accidental research and data collection, that it's important, that we sit down and face those moments, and expose ourselves to those emotions which would eventually boil down to shame, and fear.

e. These two, shame and fear are headstrong. They need to be acknowledged and accepted, and unless you do that, they won't leave. They're almost like two uninvited guests in your home.

f. Once these are fully accepted, they leave you, and you'll feel a weight lifted off you!

5. I would say that, now directing your life will be far easier if the above steps are performed to some extent. Clarity is a tough person to befriend as it needs a lot of other elements to fulfill its duties. We'll talk about clarity in another post. 

I would say that by constantly practicing acknowledgement of your feelings, you'll feel better. This means, if you're facing some loss in your life, cry it out. 

Again, crying it out doesn't mean you feel sorry for yourself. It means you genuinely feel the sadness, in your heart. There is a difference between feeling the sadness, and the idea of sadness, as Deepak Chopra says. Its true!

Everyone goes through emotions some sad some happy, and we really can't see it from the outside as much. That's why we think the grass is greener on the other side. It very important that we create that third person vision for ourselves, that we stand outside and see our actions and our path in order to direct our life with faith, and a feeling of worthiness.

This takes practice, and there's no better time than now!