Dedicated to my daughter Aabha, my nephew Yash and all my little friends and upcoming Physios who are the future of this great country.
“You are what you choose to be”, said Hogarth Hughes
to the Iron Giant with a heart (From the movie Iron Giant). But is it really
that simple. We always say how much life has been unfair to us all, how we so rightly
deserved something but never got that reward. But is life so unfair to us at all?
And if it is, what did we do to deserve something so bad???
Well, the problem is that we have been trained to crib
about everything in life. We have seen our parents, families, friends, and
neighbours, practically everyone around crib so much that we start believing in
an unjust, unfair, miserable life. We believe that there are only selective
people who have got the luck to be successful and we are the unsuccessful lot.
Well, the truth is that success is not a physical domain. It is a state of the
mind. Success is based on how well we can understand the Double OCD syndrome.
Most of us understand OCD syndrome as the Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder Syndrome, which is a behavioural challenge of doing
something repeatedly. It is generally taken in a negative term.
The Double OCD syndrome we are talking about is the Opportunity,
Challenges, Determination, Option, Choice and Decision syndrome. This is not
any medical condition. It is just how we look at life in its vivid ways.
We all feel that life never give us an opportunity.
Well, the fact is that we are given abundance of opportunities, just that we
did not realise them. I remember the story of a devotee trapped in floods who
was waiting for God to rescue him. He refused to take help from a passing car
who offered to help him. As the waters rose, a rescue boat came. He refused
their help saying that God will save him. When the waters rose to drown him, a
rescue helicopter came to take him. He refused saying God will save him and
alas, he drowned. In heaven, he asked God why such an injustice was done on
such a faithful devotee. God replied, child I had given you the opportunities
by sending the car, the boat and the helicopter. I was fair and just to you. So
is life really so complicated? We don’t fail because we don’t get the opportunities,
we fail because we do not realise them. Successful people look at opportunities
in every aspect. They look at every challenge as a means to perceive things in
a new way. They are successful only because they look at everything with a
different perspective. Thus success in always a state of mind which helps us
realise the best solutions in the worst case scenario.
Challenges are a part of life. In fact, challenge is a
stimulus for growth, a stimulus for inventions and innovations. But many of us
are too safe in our cosy zone and thus we resist change. When I read the book
‘Who moved my cheese’ by Spencer Johnson, there was a beautiful realisation of
the need to understand this change. Heraclitus had rightly said, “Change is the
only constant of life”. Even a stream has to flow, gushing through rocks and
pebbles to boulders to become a mighty river. A stagnant pond is also of no use
for sustaining life within itself. Challenges help us understand the force,
direction and magnitude of this change. Thus, by simple law of physics,
challenge is a vector quantity and thus can always be used for gaining
mechanical advantage, provided we can determine the direction to success.
There are many challenges that we encounter in life. Everybody’s
childhood may be filled with challenges, from learning to earning. But
understanding the way in which we can use these challenges helps us understand
the way to achievement. My mother’s accident in my 11th standard
introduced me not just to become self sufficient and self determined, but it
also introduced me to the profession of Physiotherapy, which invariably became
my stepping stone to success.
Once we have learned to change our perspective to the
opportunities and give direction to the challenges, what we need is the
determination to do it. Salman’s famous dialogue is the best example, ‘Ek baar
jo maine commitment kar di toh mei apne aap ki bhi nahi sunta’ (Once I am
committed to something, I don’t even listen to my own self). Determination is
the key element to success cause if you are not determined; you may get short
term benefits, but will lose on the long term gains. We had seen a wonderful
video on 'The Compound Effect' by Darren Hardy. Whatever changes are to be brought
about can never be seen unless you are determined with it. It can be as simple
as losing your weight. If you workout for a month or two, there may be short
term benefits. But to achieve those six packs, there’s always a compound effect
of determination to do it, no matter what! There is no short cut to success and
only the determined walk through the path to achieve their goals.
Life gives us options in every simple opportunity
presented to us. In the earlier case, God had given many opportunities to the
devotee. What he lacked was not just the understanding of the opportunities,
but the lack of understanding the options and making a choice. We all
understand the power of options in many physical dimensions of life, options
while shopping, voting, attempting exams etc. But it is much difficult to
understand the options in the factors of life. Although we interchange the
words options and choice, choice is the action which we take on the situations
called as options. We choose to act morally or immorally on the option of the
moral decision, to react rationally or irrationally in a confounding situation.
The choice that we make on the options of our life is called as our judgement.
It is easy to pocket a wallet full of money that you find on the road. But to
return it to its owner is a choice based on the options that you had. It is
easy to be unfaithful to a person, but to love, cherish and care for that
person forever is a choice that you take on the options that you have. This
pair of options and choice is what makes us a human.
And finally, the judgemental call that you take is
your decision. It is a virtue to act on a strong foundation and firm belief
that should imminently lead to good, moral and noble character. Thus success is
not only a mental factor, it is a spiritual factor as well. There may be
someone who looks at robbery or murder as an opportunity to be successful, does
an excellent planning to overcome the challenges and is determined to commit
the crime. Only a noble character will realise the options to commit or not to
commit the crime, to be an accomplice or not and will take a rational choice
and a judgemental decision to act in good faith. Options, choice and decisions
help us understand the consequences of the opportunities, challenges and
determinations. They are the situations that make a twin brother a police
officer and the other a criminal. What one saw as an opportunity to learn, a
challenge to progress and determination to succeed with an option to choose the
correct decision was perceived by the other as an opportunity to commit crime
to overcome the challenge of poverty and the determination to become a master
criminal with an option to choose the wrong decision. A person became a
drunkard because his father was a drunkard. Another chooses to start an alcohol
de-addiction centre because his father was a drunkard. Thus, it is a judgement
in the same situation which makes us good or bad, loved or hated.
The path to success may seem difficult to us all. But
preparing the mind to be willingly successful and the heart to be morally successful is
extremely important. Success can only be achieved when we understand the Double
OCD syndrome and not only morale our thoughts, but also make our thoughts
moral.
Dr. Apurv Shimpi
