The Secret to Move Forward - The Wind for my Wings

Whether life hands you a bucket of stuff that you want to get rid off, or you are now sitting on the sidelines of life pining for something more, the riddle remains the same. How to push your self forward? How to change your present set of circumstances?
My heart and mind say,”Go!” but my feet don’t budge. My parents tell me,”This is good for you.”, but my body doesn’t move forward. Is it plain lethargy or is it something more?
It all seems so simple actually when we think about it. We want something…but we just can’t move forward with the same verve. Our wings lacks the wind so to speak.
In my opinion, their are two roadblocks we face - resistance and fear.

Resistance is the invisible force which retards out motion. We by nature expect things to go along as they are. It is our comfort zone. Imagine we are swimming in the ocean. Now, I just thought about swimming back to shore and to comfort. As I swim against the tide, the undertow would just drag me back and gradually I will get exhausted. I will probably drown in my attempts to reach the sanctuary of the shore. If I do as experts advise: swimming parallel to the shore while the currents subside, I will reach my shore.

Here lies a small secret to move forward - Don’t resist what is beyond control, focus on what is.
It is impossible I guess, to spend my energy along two directions, to struggle against what is not in my hands and in the same breath to strive for what is in my control. We expect things to be as before, we often ask as bad luck strikes,”Why me?” or “Why couldn’t things be the same as before?”. We might whine, we might cry…but then the time comes for all of to shift gears. Often we may feel that our situation is unfair, but the situation is as it is. With all my realization, I try to embrace whats good in it. Do I need to learn anything? Is their a hidden opportunity here? Can this situation strengthen me? When you cut away all the crap, you will see that every bad situation can sow the seed for something good. It might be minuscule…but so is a seedling before it transforms into a tree. The trick and the effort lies in finding that obscure ‘good’.

After identifying this ‘good’, I try to shift my horizon to what I want to I want to feel. If I am feeling bad…how do I want to feel (obviously - good!). If I am hurt…how do I start feeling upbeat? I give myself permission to dream…to wish…and to hope. What remains is just to get back on my feet, square my shoulders and follow my heart.

Their is a beautiful saying - ‘ When the tide of life surrounds you and the water upsets your boat, don’t waste your tears on what might have been…just lie on your back and float.’

The second obstacle we usually face is - Fear.

Fear of the unknown, anything outside our comfort zone. Fear of failure…fear of success and how to retain it…fear of not being loved…fear of being loved and losing it…fear of not being enough.
Fear should not be immobilising. We just have to try and change our thoughts and attitudes. In any situation, we should realize that we are only one amongst the billions. The fear we so dread, has been faced by many before us and will continue to be faced by many after. If others can overcome their fears so can I. Make a battle-cry for yourself…I do too. I have handled other things before, I will handle this one too. I will face all the problems that come my way. After I conquer this, the ghost of this fear will be gone for ever. Just as when we learnt to tumble and cycle for the first time…watched our first horror flick…killed our first cockroach…proposed to a girl…gave the first interview…or got married, we can find the courage to face any new fear.

The secret to moving on is quite simple - keep moving, one thought, one step, one day at a time.

Something more about Abraham Lincoln

Listen to this…on a man who had to face seemingly insurmountable obstacles but never thought about giving up. This is perhaps the most inspiring piece I have ever come across.

He had to work to support his family after they were forced out of their home. 1816
His mother died. 1818
Failed in business. 1831
Was defeated for legislature. 1832
Lost his job and couldn’t get into law school. 1832
Declared bankruptcy & spent the next 17 years of his life paying off the money he borrowed from friends to start his business. 1833
Was defeated for legislature again. 1834
Was engaged to be married, but his sweetheart died and his heart was broken. 1835
Had a nervous breakdown and spent the next six months in bed. 1836
Was defeated in becoming the speaker of the state legislature. 1838
Was defeated in becoming elector. 1840
Was defeated for Congress 1843
Was Defeated For Congress. 1846
Was defeated for Congress again. 1848
Was rejected for the job of land officer in his home state. 1849
Was defeated for Senate. 1854
Was defeated for Vice-President — got less than 100 votes. 1856
Was defeated for Senate for the third time. 1858
Was elected president of the United States. 1860

It took him more than 30 years of toil to make it to the White House. So we shouldn’t get discouraged. Take a printout…stick this in front of your desk. Don’t quit

How Average People Like Us Can Excel

Staying up at night, just before going to sleep I have often wondered about this. Sometimes in frustration, sometimes in hope for a better tomorrow. How can a average guy like me excel in life? I like to think myself as a jack of a lot of things but a master of none. How do I become a standout, an achiever? I was a good student but never a topper, was good at sports but never good enough for the top grade, met my targets in my career but never surpassed them consistently. Many of us think about going to the next level. What should we do about it? The only good thing about all of our ordinariness is that is that there are so many of us. So I am not alone in my pedestrian journey. The other good thing is that all of have the power to change. We all can be supermen of our own lives. And we don’t have to be from Krypton. The power is within me and you.

Theodore Roosevelt said once: “The average man who is successful is not a genius. He is a man who has merely ordinary qualities, but who has developed those ordinary qualities to a more than ordinary degree.”

Fitting words. So, what are the qualities or attitudes we need to develop to push ourselves further.

Learn self discipline

Perhaps the most important virtue we should develop. It is the key which can unlock the doors of our potential. Life by its very nature is distracting. Self discipline is the big pot of glue which will make us stick to the all important task in front of us. It will cure our procrastination, another ally of our lack of success. Self discipline is about developing a laser focus, to do what is important right now. To postpone that nice movie playing on the TV, to say no to useless gossip on the phone, to sleep for one hour less, work or study for an hour more. Average people who want to excel have a ’stick-to-it’ attitude. They don’t expect quick fix results. They work on the particular task till the last period. They try to do the best they can. Many people on the other hand get frustrated with slow progress or lack of results. They give up and move on.
I know a few people who are just simple graduates but have worked hard to build their career step by step. That’s a very important lesson in sticking to it. We all can develop the ability to focus on what’s important.

Have a positive attitude

I have a poster in front of my desk that says - ‘Every time something bad happens, you can choose to be a Victim or a Victor’
The single line says it all about developing a good positive attitude. Success is slow, painful and full of more lows than highs. To have a positive attitude, we need to be self motivators. Work on positive affirmations. Say to ourselves that success is just around the corner. I realize that whether I think negatively or positively, both take the same amount of energy of thought. So why not think positively and visualize good outcomes for myself. Attitude after all is everything.

Manage expectations

Successful people especially average ones realize that the path forward is full of sweat and grind. Average people lack the special skills or the touch of genius to make an impossible task possible with a magic wand. Average people are the foot soldiers who have to take it step by step but have to stick to the path. Nothing is going to come easy to us. Everything we want in life has a price connected to it. There’s a price to pay if we want to make things better, a price to pay just for leaving things as they are, a price for everything. We have to realize that. Tiger Woods probably has hit thousands of balls before he putted to win his first trophy. We see the achievement but not the years of hard practice that went into the making of a Tiger Woods. Success is rarely overnight.

Learn from relationships

We can succeed or learn from the talents of others. We cannot progress in isolation. Each relationship we nurture teaches us something is we care to look. I learnt the value of ‘organization’ and ‘method’ from a former boss of mine and also from my elder brother. Today, I am much more systematic in the way I approach a particular task. Each individual has some quality which can rub off on us. For that we need to get closer and imbibe the best. I knew a person who had a spastic brother. She had to interact with doctors, volunteer helpers and educationists everyday. Through this she developed her unique skills of negotiation and people management. She brought these skills to her work and made a success out of it.

Keep Improving

The Japanese have a word for it - ‘Kaizen’. It is quite simply an incremental improvement method. You improve in small steps. More than a method, it is a philosophy and a way of life. We should be willing to change. Because every aspect of our life deserves to be constantly improved. We may be average, but we can target ourselves to learn new skills. For instance, I have decided to learn two new things every year. For this year it was learning graphic designing and blogging. For a five year period I will learn ten new things. With the advent of cheap internet resources to learn are available to us at the touch of a button. We would be foolish not to take advantage of it.

Bounce back from defeats

Their is nothing more powerful than an average person who holds his head high and goes about life with a surety and zest. Success and defeat come in equal measure. What we learn determines our growth. Sometimes, setbacks forces us to think creatively, to find new solutions and to adapt. When one door closes another opens somewhere. This is a very true maxim. Abraham Lincoln could have been destroyed by his seeming ordinariness. He came from a very poor background and was ungainly in appearance. He went on to greatness and gave a new definition to the word - ‘Average’.

As Lincoln once said - ” God must have loved the common people, because he made so many of them.”