Sometimes, we would do the same thing over and over again. Repetition. Yeap, that’s the word. But why would we do something like that? Perhaps it is to make ourselves better at something? Perhaps it is to follow what other people say “practice makes perfect”? or perhaps, it’s the easy way out? After all, we’ve done it before….so, doing it again should be easier than doing something new altogether.

No matter what the reason, repeating ourselves too often, in my humble opinion, might not be good all the time. If you are trying to improve your skill at something, or trying to learn up a new stuff, then YES, repeating is good because it is something constructive. On the other hand, if you are doing something destructive, repeating it is not healthy at all and it certainly won’t bring you any good.

Always remember that repeating over something is to make that something better, stronger and BIGGER. It applies to constructive repetition, AND also destructive repetition.

Take myself for example. Sometimes when I am having a bad day, I will try to find a few good friends online and tell them what had happened. They would listen and give me their opinions. Sometimes I do feel better after telling one or two people….but there were times, when I would end up telling 4 or 5 people. What happened then? I felt worse! I could feel I’m becoming more negative than before because I kept reminding myself of that negative feeling. I’m repeating myself and subsequently building up that negative feeling.

That’s why I decided to stop that. Nowadays, whenever I feel down or moody, I would just find 1 or at most 2 friends to talk about it. I do feel better and I can see what are their opinions on that particular issue. I will try my best not to tell more than 3 people. If I ever do that, I will start asking myself, why am I doing that and what do I intend to achieve by telling so many people? Sympathy? So yeah, stop at 2 and just forget the issue altogether. Wash it away. Start focusing on other more important things in life.

I’m not sure if this helps you, but I’m currently practicing this and I find it to be quite useful. Because I seriously believe that repetition should only be used to build up something useful and constructively. Destructive and negative stuff? Say it out and throw it away.

Just recently, a friend of mine wrote a post called “Are you an opiniophobe?“. In this post, he talks about people who have this phobia towards opinions from other people.

Let’s face it. Not many people like opinions and even more people don’t like criticisms. Some even reject them without thinking much about them. Their brain will just keep telling them “What do they know about this? They know nothing!” or “What rights do they have to comment me like that!?” etc etc.

So they will just shut themselves out from everything be it positive or negative.

I’ll be honest with you. I used to be like that and will just shut myself out from all forms of opinions. It does sting and it’s not pleasant at all when someone just comes to you and say “whoa, your work sux big time, just give it up!” I’ve experienced it before and it can be very very demotivating. But those kind of opinions are pretty rare (they are out there somewhere, but there are rare).

What we need to do is to continue with our work (and work harder to improve ourselves). Ignore all these destructive opinions which are trying to bring you down instead of helping you. Get more constructive ones. There are still a lot of helpful people out there and they want to help you by telling you what is wrong. They have good intention.

So if you really want to be successful in the things you are doing, you must be willing to accept other people’s opinions. Learn to filter them properly but not shut them out altogether. Believe it or not, your willingness to accept other people’s opinions will dictate how far you go in your life.