The Vicious loop of Inadequacy

Born in a family that acknowledges education as supreme of all I had the idea of "workhard and study to succeed" hammered into my brain. As I grew up everyday i was part of a rat race. As a child driven by marks and grades, I was introduced to the emotion of disappointment,  ecstatic and downright emotional breakdown as a primary school kid. As moving on into the years i started coming across not just one or two but so many of my colleagues who were striving to succeed just as I was. The stressful days and nights. Dark circles started coming up just as we entered early teens. 

Trying to remember details of subjects, watching my brilliant friends work hard as well. Math, Science, Language some one thrived in one yet struggled with other, some started losing hope right there. I myself as I reached final years of my highschool started to steer away from the rat race. It became a challenge to remain awake, my mind couldn't decipher things my classmates understood. I wanted to learn yet something in me just stopped me. What got fixated in my mind was that I had stopped being as good as I was. This deep feeling of being inadequate was buried in me because NO ONE EVER TALKED ABOUT THESE THINGS. If I had something going on with me which was hard I was told someone else is going through something that is even harder. I was just a high school kid and I was told university is even harder. I fought with my mind by myself and started taking help from my friends to understand concepts because I had really wanted to go to medical school to be a doctor. 

I had blamed myself for being "too lazy". It was like the race I was running I had runners who were running so fast that what got stuck in my mind was "why try when I cant even level up with other runners". Now when I think of those thoughts I went through, I know maybe one of you who is reading this had gone through this feeling in past or is going through right now. No one teaches us how to snap out of this. No one asks us or tells us that it would be alright and we will get past this phase. It is rather unfortunate that the school system either primary, secondary, tertiary and even different sectors of workplace does not extend importance to this mental challenge so many of us go through at some point. Yet here I am writing about it hoping I'd help someone that it will be alright if we choose to keep persisting and focusing on our primary goals. 

You will not forever be stuck in this loop of inadequacy and insufficiency as you have the abilities to do things beyond your imagination. What matters is that you are willing to try and persist stubbornly because you can achieve what your mind wants to. 

It's weird how we look down at "negative remarks" or condescending comments as a ball buster but science supports this as a negative and positive reinforcement actually proved by Burrhus Frederic Skinner (B.F Skinner) an American psychologist who in 1948 used lab rats to explain how postive reinforcement (operant conditioning) and negative reinforcement were both used in order to bring about and stop certain characteristics and activities of a living organism. Be it a lab rat or a human. 

I had a careers teacher in high school was very loquacious. He would go on and on about topics on different fields of career paths. One day he was showing how to fill a university course application form and he asked me what I wanted to apply for after highschool (this time I was a pretty lagging behind student as well). So I replied to him "I want to go to medical school and become a doctor". His reply had such an impact on me that now 7 years later I still remember it. He looked at me for few seconds and thought for awhile and then said,"alright let's fill a form for you that you want to be a nurse".  

Well years later when I would step into the hospital I would learn the actual pivitol role nurses play in health care sector. Although to the 16year old me who looked at it as that the status of the job reflected the importance which depended on the hierarchy and here I was when a teacher told me that I shouldn't aim that high in the hierarchy. I was baffled and simply so sad that the hidden feeling of inadequacy in me was basically poked into by someone and was validated. This teacher had indirectly told me I actually was inadequate. 

Fast forward into the years multiple exams came and went. I had sat for national external exams, internal exams and many others. I had to move on and focus on what my goals were. Took a lot of help my friends. Few years later, there I was sitting in the classroom with brilliant students from all parts of my island waiting for the first class to start as a professor walked in saying on the top of his voice, "Come Let's Gather Some Berries" and there was the day my first lesson of Anatomy 101 began.