Exploring Possibilities: Design Of Life
A few days back, I went to a book launch ceremony of my dear friend. The book was about Lord Ram. I witnessed and heard discussions about the life of Lord Ram. From those discussions one thing was absolutely clear. His life was a continuous series of disasters. He lost his kingdom of which he was the rightful heir. Ends up in a forest.
Even loses his wife, who got kidnapped by the most powerful king on earth. He gets indulged and fights a brutal war in which he was not interested. Brings back his beloved wife. After that he gets to hear undesired comments about his wife from his own countrymen.
A wife who was extremely dear to him, was left in the forest, that too when she was on her family ways, never to see her again in life. Unknowingly gets into a battle with his children. Gets defeated by them. Along with the shame and disgrace of that loss, also loses his wife. Along with these, several endless smaller disasters punctuated his life too. So why do people worship a person who had such a life of failure?
Actually in such situations, we have two choices. One is the road on which many people walk, the road to mediocrity, and the other is the thought, that after all that has happened, today is the first day of the rest of my life.
Significance of his life was not the success. It was about the gracefulness with which he conducted his life. Even if only one of these events would have happened in our life we would have gone berserk. But never once he was seen angry, out of composure or freaking out and shouting at others. Always carried the world of wisdom along. He showed us that external situations can go wrong any moment. More important is the internal dialogue within us, that takes care of our response.
Victor Frankyl the Austrian psychologists, imprisoned in death camps of Nazis, discovered the last human freedom is the power to choose your response to any conditions. Between the stimuli and response there is always some space. This space is called the space of freedom to respond. Until the age of 7 or 8 years there is no such space.
Stimuli is directly converted to response. That explains why a child obeys every command. This space gives an individual the freedom of choice. Bigger this freedom of choice is bigger is the sphere of influence of the particular individual. For a proactive person life is a function of his values, whereas for a reactive person life is a function of his feelings.
Proactive person uses his imaginative powers to make a decision, a reactive person uses his past experiences like other people's treatment, moods, and impulses external situations to make a decision.
Both stories are great examples of choice over chance. If we talk about CHANCE, most of us choose to follow a path that is easy and is validated by social proof. Most of us don’t look at our potential and ability.
As humans, how many dare to stretch our potential. It’s only the pursuit of the highest potential that helps us to enhance our competencies. Now if we talk about choice, as soon as we are hit by misfortune most of us resort to safer options. Actually in such situations, we have two choices. One is the road on which many people walk, “The road to mediocrity”, and the other is the thought, that after all that has happened, “today is the first day of the rest of my life”.
Till yesterday I may have goofed up, but from today I am going to be a different person. Any moment you can say, hi this is new me, and I am going to show who Iam. Of course this is not going to be easy, there will be obstacles and obstructions.
Now if I ask you what kind of football match do you enjoy? Perhaps most will agree that the match has lots of twists and turns. No one likes a match which is a one sided affair. Imagine a match where one player runs and scores a goal without anyone blocking him. Not even a single ticket is going to be sold.
Apparently in a football match one person plans to hit a goal and an entire set of 11 opponents plan and plot to stop that player. Life itself is designed that way. If you badly want to achieve something in life, the whole world says, we will not allow you to get it. You pull up your sleeves and say, you feel so, you underestimated me, I will show you who Iam.
We all, also get our chances in our lives and we also make our choices. The choice we make on a given chance will create our destiny. So make a great choice on a given chance and be the owner of your destiny......and explore possibilities.
(The author is a Certified Designed Thinking Master practitioner and Clifton Certified Strength Finder Coach, Corporate Trainer and a Leadership coach. He is based in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, India.)