The so-what strategy

Every day on your own teaches a brand new lesson. Sometimes you learn the easy way, but mostly great lessons are learned in the hardest way possible. Working away from home means taking a lot many decisions on your own, squeezing in time for your best friends and family in between work, and, mainly trusting people based on your own intuitions and ‘sixth sense’. Scary, it seems at first, but as time flies, and experiences blow in, we simply grow. Every little experience opens our eyes to something so marvelous, it surprises us and we ask ourselves, ‘How come I have never noticed that till now?’ or “How come I never thought of that?’

Of all the fascinating lessons life has taught me, one of the best would be the ‘so what?’ strategy. I realized that after a lot of things bothered me so much, I could not reason out why I was letting it bother me at all in the first place. Just like everybody else on the planet, I had a million things to worry about and somehow I grew up thinking I was the only woman on earth who had a million things to worry about. It took time, friends, ‘a dad’ and plenty of books to convince me that everybody has problems; they just chose to stay happy in spite of having it. Happiness is a choice. It is a habit and it comes to those who chose to make it a habit. I realized that you could let anything affect you, anything demotivate you, you could let anybody tell you that you cannot do it, let anybody scoff at you, but all of them is a choice, you let them or you don’t let them. And there are definitely times in life when you cannot stop people from doing things, from saying things and there are people and instances you cannot avoid. Thus, was born my beautiful, ‘works very well’ mantra, the ‘so what?’ strategy.  

When I first came to where I live now, I had many pre-conceived notions, a narrow mind and very little self-confidence. I am not ashamed to say that, in fact I am very proud to admit that, since it is anyways a thing of the past. Every little thing bothered me, ‘Why is she staring at me like that?’, ‘Is my question too dumb to ask?’, ‘Am I fit to do a PhD?’, and so many more you don’t want to know. I wanted to please everybody, I wanted to be everybody’s friend, I never voiced my opinion because I was afraid that people would judge me for it. I was torn between being the real me and being someone everybody liked to push around, just because it would make them happy. A recent book opened my eyes to questions that had plagues me for years. I always wondered, ‘Is it okay to stay away from people who are too negative? Or is it impolite to avoid conversations with them? Is it okay if I could just keep to myself because talking to some people only meant too much gossip? Or should I just go ahead and be a part of it because otherwise I would be shunned from the group?’ This book I read answered my queries, very direct, simple answers, not the ‘Follow your heart’ stuff that left you trying to figure out when exactly does your heart speak, and if it did say something what exactly is it saying. It said simply, that the greatest gift you could give for yourself is being truthful to yourself. To ask yourself honestly, ‘Is what I am doing really worth it? So what if that happened? It is not the end of the world.’ Well, not the exact words, but something quite close. I ended up liking the ‘so what?’ part of it.

I applied it to my daily life, and eventually everything started falling into place.

‘Oh my god, I screwed up my experiment!’

‘So what? You could anyways repeat it.’

‘Why is she acting so stuck-up?’

‘So what? Just be glad you are not her’

‘Who is he to tell me who I am?’

‘So what, does this make you who he thinks you are?’

I remember I wished a family friend for his achievement, and he acted like he did not even hear me. It was my first day back home after a long time, and it disappointed me that people whom you trust and love can act so cold that it freezes your emotions. I broke down on my way back home as it was heart-wrenching. The ‘so what?’ strategy smiled at me and though I was in no mood to think positively, I thought I’d give it a try.

‘So what if they ignored you, does this make you any lesser a person than you are? So what if your first day was bad, don’t you have a whole vacation to look forward to? So what if all your plans have flopped, you could still make plenty more.’

See? It works all the time, all you have to do is calm yourself and ask ‘so what?’

And hey, so what if I took an hour to write this instead of my report, don’t I still have tomorrow? ;)