In around the year 2010-2011, my friend Bharatlal Choudhary had started a new hobby of reading books and actually implementing the strategies he read in those book to practice in his life and we being his social surrounding were treated as his experimental specimens.
After reading an article about “Positive Peer Pressure” he explained it to everyone what the theory said, “Peer Pressure isn’t always bad, infact instead of writing a GOAL on a paper and never see it for rest of your life, its better to tell it to your friends loudly. The way human mind and conversation’s are concerned, your friends and social surrounding will keep reminding you of the Goals by constantly asking if you have achieved it or not? Sometimes you will feel motivated sometime insulted but you will have a live time target reminders and the peer pressure that will guide you in completing your GOAL”
The Idea when expressed for the fist time seemed really stupid, but in those days we tried every experiment possible to use the time we saved from Bunking(not going) the University. He stated his first goal that he would buy a motorcycle Bajaj Pulsar 220cc by the end of next year. Telling you the result in advance: he failed very badly to meet the dead line, I dint mean to say he dint try enough because I have seen myself him working hard for the Goal he stated. But when analysing the whole situation, the theory worked. During the whole time of the experiment and even after some months later his social surrounding including myself asked him several time “how the work to achieve your goal is going?”
After that our life began in different directions and I almost forgot that he still uses this theory to achieve most of his goal though first one failed. And this time, he meets his deadline and he did achieved most of his Goals.
Human mind today is so self centred that most of us dont try enough to know whats going around with others life, but this self centred mind also have a positive effect that we keep telling others what we did in past and what are our aims for future. The next time someone we meet again whom we have had conversation in past reminds us of some the words we spoke to them and again the theory of Peer Pressure seemed to be working.
I could have forgotten about the Peer Pressure Theory story until I got remained due to current two situations…
One of my current friend and a co-work said in a very jolly mode before signing off from work that Mate, I am singing off taking break and me and my husband will be starting to put full efforts in making a baby. By start of 2017 I want to have my own baby’ were her words. After that every-time I meet her the involuntary response comes in my brain to clear the curiosity and I end up asking, “IS there A Baby Yet????”
The second situation occurred that I keep telling my current co workers and friends that want to pursue PhD in Plant Biotechnology. That must be a dominant part of my conversation that even months after I met someone in a party a night before, people still asked me, “How is your search for PhD is going?” The peer pressure of these questions will surely puts me sad mood momentary but encourages me to apply more places and find options to achieve a PhD in near future.
Try the Peer-Pressure Theory yourself, and I will try if I could resist in asking, “Is there a Baby Yet????”
Tapish Dongre 