Do I deserve it?

The opening page of my personal diary reads:

“You get what you deserve! If you want to get more, then first deserve more..”.

Ok, let me first admit that I planned to write a few important incidents in my life in that diary. The purpose was to learn something from those incidents. I wanted to learn about how my mind, my thought process works in different scenarios. Hence the plan was to analyze the incident at least twice.. immediately after it has happened and after a few days when I will be in neutral state of mind. Well, that did not really work out for me as I was unable to get some personal time, where I can do something without anyone’s interference or any disturbance.

When I came to know that I will be going to Switzerland, self-discovery was one of the points which I had on my list of things to do in Switzerland. Oh.. I seem to be drifting away from the topic. Let me get back on track!

In my engineering days, somewhere I had read this statement – “You get what you deserve!” and since then this sentence has had a profound impact on my life. The “Do I deserve it?” question is the result of this statement. Whenever something happens to me, does not matter if its good or bad, I simply ask myself “Do I really deserve it?”.

This question makes me introspect myself.. It makes me aware about the things I have achieved, the things I still have not achieved. I start thinking about ways to improve my skills, be more deserving..

The habit of questioning myself, also helps me in avoiding the reaction and give me a chance to formulate a good, meaningful response to the incident.. Avoiding a reaction is very important, as when you react there is a good chance that you can actually worsen the things rather than improvise them. I have realized that, under the influence of the incident our mind works in a way favorable to us. That is, when something good happens to us, mind makes us think that “you got it because you deserved it!” and for something bad it makes us think that “you are not getting what you deserve!”. When the mind is under influence, it safely forgets to consider or ignores the other neutral or unfavorable aspects. That is why the second, neutral introspection is necessary. I usually ensure that, I act after this second introspection, which gives me a fair chance of acting correctly.

I have been practicing this thing quite from a while now. But I still tend to react in certain cases and also my both introspections still do not match in most of the cases. Its been a big challenge for me and I guess, I still have miles to go….

Now the golden question, why do I do this? The answer is simple, I always want to ensure that I am getting what I deserve and the reverse as well.. I do not like getting what I do not deserve, as I think that there is someone who is more deserving than me and he must get his due!

Many times I have seen people complaining about things.. most often their point is – they have got less than what they deserve.. be it personal life, job or anything else.. the inference is the same. People seem to be getting less than what they deserve. And then I wonder, as most of the times I feel that, I have got what or even more than what I deserve. I am curious why this is the case.. if someone has any answer, I am all ears!!