AvantGarde

Have you heard the story of the eagle and the crow?

In the streets of greater town there lived an eagle and a crow, they were best friends and used to spend most of the time together. One day the eagle fell ill and requested the crow to take care of the baby eagle. Crow being the best friend promised the eagle that she will take care of the baby eagle. So the time passed by, the eagle died and the baby eagle grew in the same nest with crows. An eagle for your knowledge flies very high and very fast while a crow flies low and slow. By nature, eagle is fearless while crow lives its entire life in fear. As the baby eagle grew big, it learned to fly like a crow, it feared flying high and never took a big leap, and it lived its entire life like a crow and died one day.

The moral is simple, we live the life we learn to live and not the one we are capable of living. Ask a child what he wants to do in his life and you will be amazed by his imagination and then meet him 25 years hence and he will be living a life entirely different from what he thought he would in his childhood. Napoleon Hill, the father of motivation and author of the best seller ‘Think and Grow Rich’ says that all limitations are set in mind, if we can free our mind from the limitations we can free ourselves to live a life we are capable of living.

The big question though is how? Let us try to explore.

The decisions we make determines the life we live, the decisions are based on our thoughts, so now the question is who controls these thoughts? May be this is a wrong question, the question to ask is where do these thoughts come from and the answer is that they come from our learnings, by learnings I mean they come from some external source, the source can be a positive source or a negative source, it can be a visible source like our parents, teachers, siblings, friends or it can a be a hidden source like a movie, a novel or someone else. Before going any further, let us try to see the importance of thoughts in our life.

Once upon a time, in the city of hoppers, there lived thousands of frogs. One day few of them were playing hide and seek when two of them fell in a deep pit, soon the frogs gathered around the pit and cried at the misery of their mates who couldn’t come up, they shouted “you can do it guys, just jump higher”, “come on-come on” the voices became louder but alas the frogs couldn’t jump their way out. As few hours passed by everyone bowed to the fact that the two frogs will soon die, “Don’t give yourself more pain, and accept the death”, “it’s ok, Die peacefully” shouted the group now but the two frogs kept trying, after all no one wants to die, hours went by and the frogs got tired, one of them lost hope and accepted his fate and died but the other one kept trying even though his mates kept begging him to give up and get rid of the pain and then after 3 more hours of constant trying  he made a leap and jumped out. The frogs were amazed, they started rejoicing and congratulated each other, “How did you do this?” asked the eldest frog. The frog didn’t reply, soon they learned that the frog was dumb. All this while, when the frogs kept shouting to accept the fate and die he kept thinking that they were cheering him to keep trying and that made him persist for so long even when his companion gave up.

Moral is simple, the thoughts that surround us determine how we will react under various circumstances and thus makes us who we are. Our potential is not what we think it is, in fact it is limitless. The limit to which one can believe that is the limit one can achieve, so now the question is how do we start to shift the limits of our belief on our self? The answer though is simple to know but tough to execute. If one wants to go beyond limits, one needs to be dumb to all those things that constantly remind him of his false limits, for example a score in the exam, a promotion, a rejection, a success, a failure etc all are false indicators of one’s limit. The only way to be dumb and blind to these limits is to be self involved, to have self belief based on knowing yourself rather than judging yourself.

Let me conclude by going to the title, What if ‘I’ were ‘Me’?  I may be able to live a life like an eagle –Fearless, I may be able to persist like a dumb frog and achieve the unthinkable, I might be able to live to my potential, the potential that is unbound, and the potential that is limitless. I here is not me, it is You, It is every one of us, If we can be ourselves wonders can happen. I will end with an observation that always fascinates me.

When I see the 100 meter sprint on TV , As all the participants take guard and the whistle blows everyone starts with almost the same speed and within a matter of seconds the speed of few drops, I always wonder that can’t they run for 10 seconds with the same energy with which they take guard and start and then I get my answer in the thoughts that must cross their mind within 2-3 seconds of the sprint, some of them might feel that they can win as their opponents are about to be left behind while some of them might feel they can’t match their opponents and they slow down and loses the race just when it begins, the point is that it is the thoughts that make them behave the way they do, what if there is a tiger 500 meter behind them will they still slow down after 2-3 seconds, of course not, till the time tiger is in striking distance no one will give up and will in fact become fast with every second.

‘I’ can be ‘Me’ and ‘you’ can be real ‘you’ only if you let the limits set in your mind free.

As Brian puts it “The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed, a new continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to be released and channelled toward some great good”

By- Ishaan Singh