There have been many instances in my personal and work life when I have felt that I was misjudged.  Let us start from my personal life. As I grew up as a child, I felt I was scolded by my parents or teachers for no fault of mine.  It could be a simple incident wherein your younger sibling could have done some mischief but you are scolded by your parents as the elder one. Similarly in the class room your teacher may scold you for some nuisance created by your neighbouring classmate. In all such cases, you feel let down. 

The work situation is no different.  You give your best and feel that you have had a great year.  When the annual appraisal is done, your manager assesses you as below par.  All through the year, you are praised by everyone for your contributions – team members, colleagues and even seniors.  But, when the promotions are announced you are ignored or superseded.  You feel miserable and feel the whole system is unfair to you.

So, whether it is the work situation or your personal life, such instances occur in regular periodicity.   I have always wondered as to “Who is the ultimate judge ?”.Some may philosophically state it is God.  But, having experienced many such situations at work or my personal life, I feel the ultimate judge is our own conscience.  If we ask ourselves objectively, what is the answer you get – that is the ultimate truth.  What the world sees is extrinsic but what we see from within is intrinsic.

It is easier to look back and examine it objectively.  It is very difficult to go through a situation like this and digest it.  I have gone through at least three such situations in my work life and may be many in my personal life too.  Each time I have felt very bad and deeply hurt.  It has taken a lot of time to recover and bounce back.  But, each time, when I have asked my conscience, I have got the right answer.

Today, when I sit back and reflected on these moments of my life, I laughed at myself.  It may neither be easy to cry nor laugh at oneself.  But, when you reach a stage in life when such incidents can be taken in your stride, you start believing more in yourself.  One sure shot answer to judge yourself apart from your conscience may be the feedback you get from all the people around you other than the person, who has misjudged you.  If the majority opinion is similar to what your conscience states, there is nothing to regret.  On the contrary, the person making the wrong judgement may regret such a judgement on you some day.  After all they too have a conscience and it will tickle them some day to wake up .

Life is a journey of ups and downs.  Each incident teaches you something.  It is up to us to live through and learn from them. It may be easier to learn from the positive experiences rather than the negative ones.  It takes time to reflect on the negative experiences but when you are able to do it, it could teach you more than the positive ones.  It is like failures teach you more than successes in life.

Like in the photo above,  God does not necessarily exist in a puja room.  God is within us.  

Let us listen to our conscience every time we are in doubt on anything in our life.

S Ramesh Shankar