Warding off diffident airs

Many of us, at many times, may find ourselves being assailed by massive waves of diffidence.

Recently, a friend, who is a dab hand at fashioning out fabulous trendy apparels, was saying, “I wish to parlay my sartorial skills into launching on fashion business, wherein I can design and retail my creations in my own boutique. But I’m not sure whether I’m cut out for that enterprise.”

Another friend drones, saying, “I’m making an important PowerPoint presentation at the official meet tomorrow. Really, I’m on tenterhooks, thinking I may falter and flounder, and botch up the whole thing.”

A relative’s daughter, a collegian, was once saying, “I have my science lecture contest tomorrow, due to which I’m in terrible state of trepidation. I don’t give a toss even if I don’t bag a prize. But I feel, I’d stupidly blabber and bumble there, creating big bloopers.”

More often than not, we find ourselves being seized by spasms of diffidence, when we are thinking of treading on hitherto un-traversed terrain, and that we have great expectations of things to happen, in the way we wish them to happen. It’s this obsession with success that, many times, spawns diffident vibes in us.

The first step to fend off the diffident attitude is by bringing ourselves to accept that it’s alright to bungle and blunder. After all, no one is born perfect and everyone learns through ‘trial and error.’

Second step would be to accept the fact that there are bound to be initial hitches/ hurdles in any new endeavour we embark on. If we wish to come up trumps, we should have the spunk to surmount these snags, by tenacity and pertinacious efforts.

After all, to achieve something stupendous, our efforts too should be pro rata stupendous. Once we believe in “winners never quit and quitters never win” mantra, automatically we can feel all the diffidence in us magically evaporating.

Paradoxically, it’s the complacency in us too that engenders paroxysms of diffidence, which hurls impediments on the success path. Being cocooned ‘in clover’, many of us have this proclivity to resist change, in taking up new challenges.

This apart, the fear of failure, of getting ridiculed at, and such other misgivings too can spawn diffident airs in us. Naturally, once we are engulfed by this diffidence, we’d rather choose being eternally mired in morass of mundane routines, than give ourselves a chance to try out something new and exciting.

 But what we fail to understand here is, by doing this, we not only feel the mental atrophy with our creative self vegetating, but also find ourselves feeling depressed and disillusioned.

So, when there is chance to explore some new territories, we should try going full fray at it, by sloughing off diffidence. After all, “There is adventure ahead if you are bold; let go of the moment that life makes you hold!”