Years back in the 90's I was subscribing to weekly newsletter from Capt. Vinod Nair's Absolute Solutions group and one of them got me thinking and I started to scribble around my thoughts on it and it took the shape of somewhat an article and I thought I would share it with Captain and he was kind enough to publish it in the next newsletter. Fyi, Capt. Nair has now transformed his company into Kimmaya Consulting Pvt. Ltd. http://www.kimmaya.com/index.htm
Here is the article:
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Almost in every aspect of our lives we follow the standard set for us by the society. There is an unspoken agreement between us and these rules and standards and most of us subscribe to that. To make my point clear I will give an example, last month 10% of the people in New Jersey became overweight without gaining a single pound because the Public Health board declared that the idea weight for an adult of average height is 175 lbs. and not 180 lbs. There are millions of ideas and notions floating around at any time in this world, but a certain idea becomes a standard of society after it gets the agreement of the majority or the authority (religious, political etc.). This process is very subtle but it is happening all the time.
So, what I meant to say is that before we aim for any goal we got to break our mental barrier set for the limit of the achievement and not blindly subscribe to every standard set to us by the society (by no means I am implying to set the ideal weight for yourself to 250 lbs. and pig out!). Winning and loosing are merely frame of mind and are relative, what's important to live life powerfully is to understand - responsibility and generosity. Responsibility and Generosity for ourselves and people around us and not being stingy and keeping the channels of communication open. Instead of living our lives from past, we should generate our lives from the future. Designing new possibilities for the future and living them everyday, in fact this is what I believe "I am who I say I am and I am the possibility of my future". The "time-tested" model of living life is based on the fact that we learn from our past and identify ourselves as a product of our past. Our past defines who we are and we believe in that. Just imagine how powerful would that be to live our lives from the immense possibilities that our future hold for us. A future which is totally free from the stories and preconceived notion hardwired into our minds over the years: I can't do that, I am not that good, May be someone can do it but not me, I could have done that if I had more time or money, It's too late to do it… you take your pick from this or I am pretty sure we all have the required ingenuity to come up with a reason to NOT live your life fully.
We all have these reasons and we say that this is being content with what we have achieved so far. Nice argument but wait, is it really so? I think the fact is that we make up these reasons because we don't want to accept our own strength and greatness!
It is basic human nature is to adapt to the situations and create a "comfort zone", declaring your dreams will make you to step out of that "comfort zone". Here is an example, please excuse me because it is a little graphic. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water then it will jump right out of it, but if you put the same frog in the normal water and boil the water in the pot gradually, the frog (poor soul!) dies. This is very similar to how we react in life, we adapt to any worsen situation and keep adapting until it stifles and kills us!
Now if we come out of our comfort zones and declare to the world about our dreams and aspirations then "they" will hold you accountable for the results. And we will have to deal with "their" inflated expectation, but aren't we more worried about our own expectations? Right then and there you fret about the failure, the dreaded word and it is we who give it the power which renders us powerless. And there you have it; this is the moment of truth where we can either be a stand for our power and greatness or simply surrender. It is us who can choose to retain our power and not give it away to the failure and stand for our possibilities of our future. Fear of failure emerges from the made-up stories of fear and anxiety from our past and the true possibility is free from any stories of past, we have to BECOME that possibility of living life from the promises of the future. We have no control over the past but we sure have all the power to generate new possibilities for us and live them every moment.
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