FIRST IMPRESSION IS NOT THE LAST IMPRESSION. Rather…

I have been thinking a lot about this. How many times do we come across people who appear very promising in the first meeting but as we spend more time with them, as we observe them closely, we find that our expectations were too high? On the other hand, aren’t there too many times when we underestimate the person we are meeting just because their tie wasn’t perfectly tight or we didn’t agree with their idea of dressing up? What I gathered is:

FIRST IMPRESSION IS NOT THE LAST IMPRESSION. Rather…

I will get to the ‘rather’ part in a little while. I read somewhere that it takes just one-tenth of a second for us to judge someone and make our first impression, with confidence in impression formation increasing with increasing time taken to form the impression. (Okay, I know there is a huge risk that I have lost quite a few of you after you finished reading the last sentence, but read the title and apply it here, in short: continue reading.) So what happens after we have formed the FIRST and the so called LAST impression about someone?

If our perception about the other person is extremely good, then obviously we would like to meet that person again. And when that happens again and again, we come to know the person for who he or she really is. We realize they may not be that ‘spectacular’ person we had expected them to be and that they may also have some faults. It then boils down completely to us whether we want to be friends with that person. On the other hand, if we don’t find the other person ‘impressive’ enough, what do we do? Most of the times, we never make an attempt to know them. If, by any chance, we come across them again, we restrict ourselves to “hi” or “hello” and that’s it. That ‘unimpressive’ tag remains attached to that person in our mind.

All of us know people who have won our hearts in the first meeting and then remained our friends forever, even after we discovered various ‘unimpressive’ things about them. On the other hand, how many people do we know who didn’t seem ‘spectacular’ in the first meeting, but you just couldn’t have enough of them in your lives after you were forced to spend time with them and know them?

So, let’s complete the sentence:

FIRST IMPRESSION IS NOT THE LAST IMPRESSION. Rather

FIRST IMPRESSION IS A STRONG IMPRESSION.

And it’s completely up to us how STRONG we make it to be. The best thing to do is to think:

“What if I am on the other side?”

Doing something is always better than doing nothing.

Let me begin by asking you, ”What is going on your mind?” Don’t worry, this is not a social networking site which first starts by asking you “what’s going on in your mind?” and enthused by your response, gets more inquisitive and asks questions like, “what’s happening?” and “How’s it going?”. Actually, it’s my fault. I should have begun by asking the full question, “What is going on your mind when you are doing ‘something’?”

Now, this ‘something’ can be anything, ranging from playing cricket to watching a movie, reading a book to writing one, being in a relationship and caring for your loved one to hating that one person you can’t stand, watching television to reading a newspaper, getting up early in the morning at 5:30am (for those who don’t : in winters, it’s just like : “Andheri raton me, sunsaan rahon par, ek masiha nikalta hai, jise log Shahanshah kahte hain”, you need to sing it, only then you will get the feel of it. For those who are “pretty good” singers like me, here’s the link  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGYGaadeBdw) to staying up the whole night waiting for that one phone call.

You must be thinking that you are halfway through the post, and you still don’t know what I am talking about. Now, accept it as it is, that’s my way. I like building the premise.

Enough about me and my weird ways, now just think about my question. Since I cannot get your reply immediately, let me try and answer it from my perspective. When Sachin Tendulkar is on the field, is he worried about some anchor on a news channel debating how he should have retired long ago. When a salman khan fan is watching “dabanng 2”, he doesn’t think about what the critics have got to say about the plot of the movie or lack thereof. When J.K. Rowling was writing Harry Potter and when the readers were reading it, all they were concerned about was what would happen eventually. When you are talking to your loved one after a hard day, just listening to a sweet Hello can lift your mood.

Now, just imagine, you have got nothing to do. What would your mind be full of? There’s a saying “Empty mind is a Devil’s workshop.” I think there is no empty mind. There are always some thoughts in our mind. If we are doing something, these thoughts will always be about that ‘something’. The thoughts will always be about how you can do that thing in the best possible way. But, if we are not doing anything, our mind will be full of negative thoughts about ourselves. So,

Doing something is always better than doing nothing. This is the truth which, once realized, will change our entire way of thinking. But the problem is, this truth cannot be realized by reading a post. It can happen only when you are doing nothing and you get an overall bad feeling. When this happens, the trick is to just start doing ‘something’. Trust me, it helps.

 Now, this may sound a lot like preaching. But, believe you me, the fact that you are reading this is the proof that something was done so that you are able to read this. The more important question for you is “Was reading this better than doing nothing?” and for me is “was writing this better than doing nothing?” I can only answer the latter. Yes, it was. The former is for you to answer. B+.