Rajan says it so beautifully, ‘the only constant in life is change!’ Change is the way of life today. Everything has changed – lifestyle, people, relations, cities, comforts, luxuries, and so much more. If I don’t change with changing times, I shall surely be left behind. But we in AM believe in leading the way and not be left behind. With times we have also evolved and changed so many things – course, training style, MM, processes and so much more. We have been experiencing a unique and a wonderful change in Pune from a few months now. The change is with regards to celebrations; celebration for people graduating from the new batches. Earlier we would have graduation functions, then we started welcoming them in the MMs and now it’s a different ball game altogether. We welcomed a double batch with sports convention, another one with an alumni, another one with a public program, and another one with a meditation camp. Well, this Sunday was no different. The two batches had just finished their last session on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. This Sunday would be their first experience in the fraternity. We welcomed all of them with an outstanding public program. They would not have got a better welcome than this Sunday’s program!
There is a disease which has been spreading rapidly. It’s a very dangerous one. It shows no symptoms, looks harmless at the outset, just attacks and I am left wondering. The critical part is that the more I feed it, the more it grows. I don’t even realize when it strikes me. That disease is – becoming only a knowledge and information store house. It means that I gather all the knowledge that is possible in the world, but don’t implement it. The focus is to share information with people and prove my intelligence. The moment I hear something I don’t relate as to how I will implement it in my life. I only think of with whom I can share this information. The right way to live would be, when I listen to a piece of knowledge the first thought is how do I implement it in my life. My focus should be on integrating the knowledge that I gain with implementations, i.e. living and growing out of it. Unutilized knowledge is a burden. I may not realize it now, but in the long term, I would actually feel the pressure that I am not living my life to the fullest. I know so much, but am not able to practically use it in my daily life.
When I want to integrate learning with implementation, I require initiation. If I continue to live on hope, things will turn out difficult. Say, things are not working in my favour, I can continue to hope until things get better or I can take the initiative and make things happen. E.g. I want my organization to function in a particular way. But there is resistance from say my father; he being a traditional thinker. On one end, I can continue to hope that one day he shall understand and allow me to do things my way. Or I can take things in my hand, take the initiative, communicate and get things moving the way I think is right. The tragedy is that at times, I keep hoping and be miserable in the process. Either I should take the initiative or I should happily hope. Let me not lose my happiness in the process of hoping. The ideal way is to take the initiative and grab the opportunity with both the hands. In the process, my attitude would be to have total faith in Him, but act as if everything depends on me. Naren so beautifully says, ‘If I do my best, he will do the rest. If I don’t do my best, he continues to rest.’
To be able to take an initiative and do things requires me to trust myself. Unless I trust myself totally, I will not be able to go ahead and do things which I think are right. I need to believe in myself and have that confidence that even though the world seems against me this moment, I shall stand up tall and prove my decision to be right. So much power will be difficult without 100% trust in myself. So, how do I go about building trust on myself? I can have small day to day achievements and make a beginning to build trust. E.g. when I have to get up, I will get up in a single alarm and not have three alarms. If I have decided to exercise, I shall exercise; I shall give my best every time and so on. This can be a beautiful start to building trust on myself.
To be able to do monumental things, I need to take initiative and have trust on myself. To sustain that even through rough phases of life, I need three attitudes –
1) Failure is no shame – I go through ups and downs in life. It’s a part and parcel of this game called life. At times I win and at times, I lose. I must etch it deep in my mind that there is no shame in failing. The important thing though, is that I must have given my best in the situation. Inspite of that if things don’t work out, then He must have upset my plans as he has better plans for me! It is said so beautifully that the one who hasn’t failed, hasn’t done enough with life and has not lived up to his potentials. Let me go all out, and even if some failure comes in way, let me accept it and keep marching ahead taking it in my stride.
2) Ask for help – I need to keep my ego aside and ask for help whenever needed. No one makes it all alone. All of us need help. Let me not hesitate to ask for help. I need not get ego involved anytime. If I have some doubts or need some clarity, I can definitely approach higher intelligence so that my life moves at jet pace! When Naren had some doubts and questions, he would never hesitate to have chat with Rajan and discuss the important issues.
3) Learn – I must keep learning from all situations; I need to keep the learning curve growing. Yes, I understand that failure is nothing to feel ashamed about and that I need to keep my ego aside and ask for help. But the most important part is that I need to learn from my mistakes. If I don’t learn from my mistakes when they are small, life hits back hard seemingly telling me, you should have learnt when it came in a small way, now face the big grown lion instead of a cub. My attitude should be to learn from each and everything by keeping my mind open to everything and not jumping to conclusions.
Naren
naren@almamater.com
