"Are you mad at me?"

Have you seen this movie? This is a 2003 movie called Shattered Glass starring Hayden Christensen.

This movie is a true story about Stephen Glass who was a reporter at The New Republic magazine. The New Republic is a liberal American magazine of commentary on politics and arts. (Thank you Wikipedia)

Shattered Glass dramatised the time when Stephen Glass basically fabricated a whole bunch of stories and The New Republic printed them as fact. In all, Stephen Glass wrote 27 fabricated stories for the magazine.

I have watched the movie a few times and the one thing that I noticed that the main character said a number of times was, "Are you mad at me?"

How many times have you ever said that? "Are you mad at me?"

I know that I have said it sometimes. A few days ago I heard my name in a office that I was in. My initial reaction was "oh shit, I've done something wrong." So I jokingly asked "Am I in trouble?" However, for a few seconds, I genuinely believed that I was in trouble and I didn't like it. Isn't that stupid?

Let me give you another example. Earlier this year I was working out at my Crossfit gym. My partner asked me to spot him while he was doing some back squats. I stood behind him and touched him as he came up from the squat. At the end of the set he asked me to just stand there and not touch him. Stupid old me thought that he was mad and I didn't like it. I realised later that day that he wasn't mad. Far from it. He was just saying to not touch him when he was going up from the squat but to just be there as psychological support.

Why did I think he was mad? Why did I think I was in trouble?

It certainly is a sign of low self-confidence. In the first example, I was worried that I had done something wrong in my work as my confidence is a little bit low at the moment.

In the second example, I'm still unsure about the whole Crossfit environment even though I have been doing it for a couple of years so I felt not very confident that I was doing the right thing. Of course I as doing the right thing according to my thinking but my partner wanted something else according to his way of doing things. But I felt bad that I thought that he was angry, which he wasn't.

In life, people are going to get angry. That's their emotions coming out. If you are confident in yourself and you know that you have done the right thing then it shouldn't affect you. You should just get on with life.

I tend to dwell on these moments, when in fact I should brush it off and go about my purpose in life. I'm sure that the more I get into this purpose the less that these "angry" moments will affect me.