Feedbacks...

I've been looking at mirror lately for longer periods of time. I was wondering what the reason could be. The mirror is just a feedback mechanism that reflects who you truly are (in a physical context). When you smile, you get the smile back and when you frown, the reflection frowns as well. Imagine the case when we smile and the reflection frowns and so on, we definitely wouldnt want to look at the mirror. Not so much because it doesnt do what we intend it to do, but, I think it may have to do something about running the risk that the mirror might reflect something that we dont intend to see.

When we face the risk of not being able to deterministically predict what is going to happen next,we try to shy away from it, especially if "others" are involved. I was thinking about exams, performance appraisals, races, etc., The more you tend to take up new things, the more feedbacks you are going to get from reality. As the saying suggests, Ignorance could be a real bliss sometimes. If you dont take an exam, you will never feel bad about being the last percentile student. The same works the other way too. More than the question about facing reality, the real question is, are we ready to take feedbacks. Apart from the stereotypes about who is giving the feedback and how it can influence you, let us just ponder for a moment and think really hard on the last feedback that we got, the one that we "really" felt was an eye opener.

I think feedback is a great mind conditioner (no shampoo..). If one is able to consume feedbacks and respond to them solely based on their true merits, I think nothing can stop them from attaining greatness. As kids, I remember the times when we were attuned to receive feedbacks and act on it (presumably the good ones..). After we attain a threshold, I think we forget the fact there are still things that need improvement. The more I think about it, I feel that our improvement potential is just a factor of the baseline using which we rate ourselves. We always have the choice of picking our baselines. Irrespective of what we pick, if our baseline has to improve, feedback is the key.