The Price of a Praise

How would you feel standing in front of 1000 people and giving an an extra ordinary speech. People are mesmerzied and hanging on every single word of yours. Every body is admiring you wishing and thinking how lucky they would be only if they can talk to you. They are clapping, shouting, screaming for you. How would that feel, Wouldn’t that feel nice. Wouldn’t you feel proud. Wouldnt you play that in your head over and over. Wouldn’t it feel beautiful. But when we see beauty in something ugliness is created.

And it feels so good that we start to cling to it,

Ladies and gentleman, praise and liking make us feel significant, important, powerful. So we start to cling on it, crave for it, want more of it. but we often overlook the toxic byproduct of that craving.

This craving for liking or praise, inavatlibly breeds mental stress and dissatisfaction. We get angery on minor remarks, even if they are true. We start to worry about pity things, only 23 Facebook like. We start to worry and concern over such a trivial issue.

And than comes the fear, what if people don’t like you, hate you, reject you. Well people say don’t care about what other people say. Well if you like the praise, not taking critisim personally is not inside your circle of choice. But we if you don’t really care about the praise how could you take criticism personally.

It is our innate nature that we start to build our identity, a self image based on these praises, and it start to feed our pride and ego. And if we are not careful, this little craving for liking start to materialise into strong sense of self importance. We start to live inside our circle of familiarity and stop growing. And little by little that circle of familiarity start to shrink, and we feel suffocated, all because we want that little praise.

Like an addict we start to demand that liking from other and we become emotionally dependent. We start to put up a show and start to perform. Our conversations becomes self advertisement. If we are such fragile sense of self, how could we build any genuine relationship. all because we want that little praise.

so what if you speak infront of 1000 people and words are not coming out properly, sentences doesn’t make sense, forget to make sense you are barely able to speak, some are laughing, some are nodding in sypathmy,and most are not even listening, how would that feel. How long invouleterly you would play that in your head. That is the idecator of how much you care about liking and praise.

At one point in my life, I believed in that praise and pride and became very ego centric. The reality was I was really underdeveloped in many areas. Relationship was one of them. I was extremely poor in it. I didn’t know how to talk to other people and connect with them. But one of my friend was really good in it. He knew how to dress right, how to calibrate conversations, he had a French girlfriend, instead of asking his help, all I did was rationalising in my head, how I am better than him because I make more money than him. When we start building our identity around that praise, we stop growing, stop learning, start clinging. Our circle of life start to shrink all because we care about that little praise.

Emotionally we start to become isolated form other people, because we are putting up a show, so other like us, praise us, admire us. If we are not being authentic how can we build genuine relationship. All because we are clinging to that little praise, if we don’t care about that praise how could we take critisim seriously, if we don’t take critisim seriously why would there be any hesitation to come to this stage and have any fear, or try anything new and have no fear of failing. But we fear because we are clinging to that little praise, how beautiful life would be, if we can gradually learn to release that clinging.

And then comes the strong fear what if people didn’t like us, hate us, critise us. People say well don’t take critisim personally, Well if you like the praise and liking taking critisim not personally is not in your circle of choice. Little by little, because we want that pride and praise, we start to become tight, rigid, lifeless. Our life becomes self centred and we become narsessist. What a waste of life. All because we crave for praise.