All of us are born with strong feelings of likes and dislikes. These feelings shape our personality from childhood itself. That’s why we hear new mothers make statements like — ‘my child doesn’t like green colour’, ‘he gets irritated on seeing yellow dal’, ‘he doesn’t like his scout uniform,’ etc. It is not an exaggeration when I say that one of the greatest causes of tension, burden and conflict in our life is the feeling of dislike for others.
There is a saying, ‘a person disliked is a person remembered’. How many of us waste time pondering over other’s faults and mistakes? Majority of us do it to such an extent that it reaches a level where we can’t sleep at night.
The question is, why do we allow ourselves to collapse into such an unwanted experience? Is it mandatory for us to dislike someone because they are wrong or perhaps because they are of a displeasing disposition? Why can’t we change our perspective in such a way that our inner reaction changes from negative to positive? For this, we need to wear the right kind of glasses that will enable us to maintain a positivity. By doing so we’ll be able to see good traits and virtues in others instead of their defects and weaknesses.
Once we learn this technique of seeing just virtues in others, life will become much. The technique is very simple, and it begins with the self. If we reflect over the years, we will notice that the phases where we were most unhappy with others were the times when we were most dissatisfied with ourselves. We may not have recognised this at that time. In essence, it is similar to those moments when someone is in a ‘bad mood’ and at that time they are irritated by everything around and nothing will please them.
Remember, when we are dissatisfied from within, we will be dissatisfied with just about everyone and everything, without knowing the cause of this dissatisfaction that’s directly related to the perspective or vision we hold of ourselves.
Hence, we must first begin by asking ourselves, what is the perspective I have of myself? How do I see myself in the mirror? This is a proven fact by psychologists that people who are generally unhappy with who they are do not like themselves. So, if we are not positive about ourselves, on what basis can we be positive about others? So, like yourself in order to like others and develop new, desirable qualities within yourself.