My life hasn’t been without problems. But I have always felt that I am privileged. By virtue of where I was born – (a democratic country, relatively safe city), financial status (upper middle class), family (fundamentally good warm-hearted people), opportunity (good school, college, jobs), the current time in history and so much more.

But, as I grew older, I came to realize that not everyone has the same perspective. I have sometimes struggled to make friends understand the vast number of things we should be grateful for. To even just acknowledge them.

It is hard when someone is too focused on their own problems and pain.

Recently I was listening to a panel of budding artists speaking on nepotism. An actress had just finished talking about the struggles she still faced even after her family had facilitated her entry into the field. The actor who spoke after her had just one thing to say.

She is right. The only difference is that where our careers stop, is where theirs begin.

Simple statement. Captured the essence of everything I had failed to communicate so far.

Acknowledging privilege is not about living with guilt or sacrificing opportunities that come our way. At best, it motivates us to help those who are less fortunate from our more advantageous position, to fight the battles that they don’t have the time, energy or resources for. At the least, it ensures we remain grounded and treat others with the respect they deserve.

At the end of the day, what have we got to lose?

So why then do we hesitate?

I believe it is because we don’t want to deal with the self introspective journey that it would lead us on.

Isn’t that a really poor excuse?

Surely we can be better than that.

It never works. Simply because advising a person who has not asked for it, only puts him/her on the defensive.

But what about those crucial times when not giving advice could be a lapse in duty? Like if a family member is becoming an addict. Or is a friend is marrying the wrong person. At these times, wouldn’t maintaining silence be our failing as friend or family?

I came across an important distinction about our response in such situations. Speaking the truth versus giving advice. The former is about telling what we believe regardless of how hard it is or how receptive the other person is. The latter, however, is driven by our need to ensure that the other person takes the same decision that we want them to.

Giving advice in such situations is not a complete no-no. What we need to be aware of is that our duty is to tell the truth first. Then show support and listen. These steps would open up a path for the person to reach out to us for help or counsel down the road, even if not immediately.

And as we all navigate the unpredictable path of adulthood, that is really the best we can aim for.

One of the things I struggle with is the effect of compound guilt when I have delayed expressing my thanks or concern to someone. The procrastination adds a layer of regret, contrition and self-reproach which grows as time passes until the point where I feel worse about the delay compared to the strength of emotion I feel about the original event.

However, recently when the roles were reversed, I found that the minute my friend acknowledged her lapse in reaching out, my negative feelings about it disappeared and I seamlessly moved on to rekindling the friendship.

Why do I think that the same cannot apply to me?

I realised that there were two components. One, a lack of compassion for self. Two, expecting less from others compared to the standards I expect from myself. This thinking is shaped by several factors – life experiences, cynicism, self-worth, definition of self identity and so on.

But in the end, there is only one reason to overcome these biases – believing that everybody around us is capable of being and doing better.

It happens slowly, over a period of time, without our knowledge, as a result of environmental factors and life experiences, shaping how we think and respond.

Identifying it is the first step. And a pretty hard one at that. It comes out of an inspired moment of self awareness or, as it is most often, because someone points it out.

Once we have gotten past that first hurdle, the next one is learning how to counteract it.

Finally the last step which is as hard as the first one. Even after we have figured out how to deal with it, we will still fall back to old conditioned habits easily, especially when it is situational. We have to consistently and consciously take stock of our behavior and reset if needed.

Conditioned responses are sneaky, hence the hardest to circumvent. If we don’t, we will never realize the numerous other possibilities that exist out there.

When we try to handle difficult times independently, because we won’t want to burden the people close to us, we forget that our happiness or lack of it affects the people around us too. If we feel 100% of the weight on our shoulders, those in our core inner circle feel at least 50% of it as a result of its effects on our mood, behavior and general state of well being.

Something that I had come to realize in recent years but had relegated to the back of my mind.

I was glad to be reminded of it again.

Self compassion is extending compassion to oneself in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering.

Self-pity on the other hand is an emotion “directed towards others with the goal of attracting attention, empathy, or help” and one in which the subject feels sorry for themselves.

Self-compassion is useful. It helps us shed the excess baggage of the past so we can keep moving forward.

Self-pity is the useless emotion. It makes us wallow in our miseries, reduces our empathy for others and projects a pessimistic view of everything happening to us, good or bad.

Even though the line separating the two is quite clear objectively, the transition can sometimes be unnoticeable, especially since self-pity narrows our world view and makes us unreceptive to anybody who wants to help lift us up.

Feeling sorry for oneself is a human emotion we can’t avoid, like jealousy or greed. What is important is to recognise when it happens. Because the only person who can cut through the cloud of self-imposed misery at that time is you.

Everybody has a story. We just need to care enough to find it.

Hearing and dealing with criticism constructively is something that we all struggle with. Right? Apparently not.

Bridgewater, one of the most successful hedge fund companies, has a culture of what they call radical transparency. This means that anyone can give constructive criticism to any employee of the company at anytime. This applies even to the CEO, Ray Dalio, the man who crafted this kind of challenging workplace.

So how does he ensure that such a practise doesn’t cause strife or break harmony within the team?

First, whenever they make a hire, they are upfront with the potential recruit about what the company culture is and ask whether he / she is willing.

Second, everybody gets scored not just on how good or bad they are doing, but also on how well they take critical feedback. One employee says, “When you have received a bad report on your performance, the only thing left that you can still do well on at that point, is in displaying graciousness and maturity in accepting that assessment”.

Another observation he made was that he was more open to criticism when he had solicited it. He was not that amenable to unsought advice.

Whether these practices are applicable in every kind of workplace, I am still skeptical of. I am sure there are more nuances to preventing discord in such a confrontational environment. Also, this might be applicable to fields like hedge fund management that rank performance much higher than all other factors, but cannot be universal. Each company has to decide for itself what are the core values they want to build on.

Having said that, there are still personal lessons here on how to get better at taking constructive criticism.

By humbling yourself enough to request for it.

By recognizing that graciousness in acceptance is a strength of character in itself.