The Gilmore Girls dilemma

Does watching focused, consistent and hardworking people give me the motivation to work harder or does it make me question my diligence? Does reading about successful people make me want to establish more in life or does it lead me to believe that I am a failure? Does watching the goal-oriented Rory Gilmore from the TV show Gilmore Girls push me to work towards my goals or does it make me stress about how less I have achieved? This is what I like to call the Gilmore Girls dilemma.

I often find myself in such situations which are followed by endless hours of self-doubt and whining. WHY MUST ALL OF THIS SEEM SO DAUNTING ALL THE TIME? I have found the answer to this question recently. There are two things that I had to believe in order to have a more positive outlook towards things that happened around me.

One, every individual on this earth is unique. Just because someone who got accepted to an ivy league institution had 100+ hours of community service doesn’t mean you need that too. No college wants a class full of students with just singers or dancers or squash players. They want all kinds of people. Just because your peers spend 7 hours a day with their books does not mean that that is what you need to do to be at the top of the class. Just do you.

Two, stop making excuses and start working. I have wasted days, weeks and months worrying about how under qualified I am to get admitted to a good college, undermining myself and my capabilities. However, these are just excuses that we make in order to avoid the actual work and the effort it requires. Those 5 or 6 months could have gone into reading books, taking up courses, contributing to the community but instead, they were “ALL TALK AND NO ACTION.”

It is not easy to get what you want but if you know the attention that it requires and give it your best shot, it’s child’s play.