Thursday, March 29, 2018

Six years!

It has been six years since I started writing this blog. I published my first post on 5th March 2012, and the blog has now more than 400 posts. The main aim of writing this blog is to share my thoughts and not to publish articles regularly. This journey started with the intention of sharing my views on various social, political, and personal issues while getting feedback from readers about their own views. It has been a very rewarding experience for me so far. I hope to continue it as long as possible, the frequency of posts might get reduced based on how busy I get with various other things in my life, but the blog will remain an active place to share ideas in the near future also. 

As I already mentioned, so far, this has been a really rewarding experience for me and I hope all blog readers also enjoyed reading the blog. Please feel free to share your thoughts, all of us need to express ourselves in whatever medium we feel comfortable with, this is how we educate each other and learn from each other.

Thanks for reading and encouraging me. I wish happy reading to all readers.

Monday, March 26, 2018

Peer pressure - good or bad?

We all face or must have faced "peer pressure" at some point in our lives. Peer pressure is not only the pressure one feels from their friends during high school or college which forces them to do the stuff they don't want to do or when they take drastic steps to fit in the stereotyped definition of a "cool person," it is the pressure which we feel from people from our age group at any point of our lives. It can be in school, college, workplace, society, family, or on online social media. In today's era of social media, these people don't have to be our school or college friends, they can be anyone from anywhere in the world, and this aspect has broadened the group of people who can exert peer pressure on us. I see many people get affected not only by their friends and relatives who are part of their inner circle but also by people whom they don't even know personally (only know from social media).

Is peer pressure good or bad? If it is only bad then why do people succumb to it or get affected by it so much? The truth is, that many of us need continuous validation from people around us. We crave recognition and praise. Why? Because it motivates us and makes us feel happy and valuable. And this is where peer pressure kicks in. To get that validation and recognition we feel the need to cater to what is demanded or liked by the people around us. Before social media, these people used to be the ones from our peer group, people whose validation we crave the most. This why we try to fit into stereotyped definitions of beauty, try to achieve success in ways the society defines it to us, and try to live life the way it is being advertised, even our definition of happiness and success is heavily influenced by the advertisements and market forces. However, thanks to social media, there are so many things apart from our immediate peer group that can create peer pressure on us. Social media has expanded the definition of the peer group, not we can be peer pressured by anyone from anywhere in the world.

If this pressure encourages you, helps you to work harder, motivates you to wake up every day and go to work, and feel good about yourself then it is good for you and it is helping you. But, if this peer pressure is making you frustrated, feel overburdened with expectations from others, feel dejected and worthless about yourself, adding to your anxiety, and making you depressed, then definitely it is hurting you and is bad for you. It can work either as a motivator or depressor depending on how you react to it.

The first step is to try to recognize what this pressure is doing to you and based on that one can plan how to deal with it. The best way is to immunize yourself from it so that it can't affect you in any way, but in this case, you also lose the positive effects of it. Another way is to be aware of its existence, use it only in a positive way, and consciously avoid getting negatively affected. It is not that easy, but I think it is necessary in today's world that we keep the focus on our mental hygiene as much as we focus on our physical hygiene. There is a lot of help available (books, blogs, and online forums) to learn how to use peer pressure to our advantage. We must take advantage of all these resources and make peer pressure work for us. The truth is, it is very difficult to avoid peer pressure, so it is better to learn how to deal with it so that it can help us rather than drag us down. 

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.