Many Attempts BUT Just One Chance

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Every parent has asked his or her child this question. Mostly in the hope of attracting an answer that they would most like to hear. It doesn’t turn out like that because; fortunately as kids we know exactly what we want.

We all started out as a baby knowing exactly what we wanted.

You knew when you were hungry. You spit out the food you didn’t like. You jumped and played when you wanted, where you wanted. When you wanted something you said you wanted it and regardless of whether or not it was possible, you insisted you must have it. You cried when you did with no inhibitions. You laughed when you felt like. You spoke to people you liked and ignored the ones you didn’t. You crawled and later walked towards whatever was of interest to you. You sat alone and played. You made a mess if you wanted to. You screamed. You loved. You got angry. You expressed everything.

Then something happened. Something happened that taught us that we couldn’t do what we want to. Just cannot. And began the school of mindless conditioning when someone said….

Don’t touch that.

Don’t climb up so high,

Don’t jump on the sofa,

Eat what’s on your plate whether or not you like it,

Don’t just keep crying like a baby,

You should be ashamed of yourself for doing that,

Good babies do this and

Bad babies do that,

Bad baby. Good baby………

As you got older this changed to…

You can’t have it just because you want it.

Life doesn’t work that way.

Money doesn’t grow on trees.

You just keep thinking about your own self. That’s so selfish.

Stop doing it or else…

Do what I tell you to do.

I know what’s best for you.

Who do you think you are.

How dare you defy me.

Before all this conditioning began you might have know what you wanted to be when you grew up. This school of mindless conditioning achieved something. It achieved a mindless life.

Years of sanctions, mockery and ‘world orientation’ later we lost the desires of the heart and got stuck in figuring what is a good thing to do which pleases everyone. Not that you cared much about pleasing them. You just wanted to put to stop to their badgering.

The results of conditioning started to appear.

We go to an engineering college because Dad wants it.

We get married and settled because that’s the way I was brought up. That’s a good thing to do.

We get a real job instead of pursuing an alternate career.

We joined Dad’s business because HE spent his life building it.

We dress a certain way.

We behave a certain way.

We live a certain way.

We now are a certain way.

Who’s certain way is it? Is it yours?

In the name of being sensible, rather in the name of coming across as sensible we end up becoming numb to our desires.  

Its not surprising that in our workshops when we ask people about their goals, people can at most think about a small improvement over the current life. They can hardly indentify what they would truly want. Such is the power of that conditioning - that we learnt long ago to not voice our silly desires and today we have conquered the mind that is does not even explore it.

A few years ago I took a break from my career to learn photography (irrespective of the criticism, mockery and belittling). After a few theory classes it was time for all thirty of us to go out and shoot. Something obviously you look most forward to in a photography class. Our teacher took us to a close by monument 630 in the morning. As I stood there in front of that monument I remember thinking, I wish we were elsewhere. I never really liked shooting monuments.

Then my teacher said something that has stood with me ever since and perhaps shaped the rest of my life, “if you don’t like this monument, just listen to my instructions on the light and get to a place that you do like. Everyone deserves to have everything in their life just the way they want it.”

Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t that completely opposite of the premise that most of us are brought up on? Isn’t that the enemy of the years of our conditioning?

We did a small research on that statement later on and asked a hundred a people on how they would feel about having what they want in life just the way they want it. Astonishing is the conclusion – 100 of used the word happy. 89 of them used it alongside another word, ‘ and guilty’….

It is sad. It is sad because all of us just get one life. Just one chance to fulfill a promise that we were born with. Just one chance. It is despairing that we have got conditioned to talk about our own desires by using such words as, “I don’t know, I don’t care, It doesn’t matter anymore, What can I do now, Its too late, How can I, Whatever…..”

Life might give us one chance and we might feel we have blown it because of all such factors but the truth is that within that one chance the number of attempts we can make aren’t limited.

What do you want? What do really want? Begin with shamelessly telling yourself what you want. Remember the words of my teacher – you deserve to have in your life what you want just the way you want it. Because its your life. And because its your only chance to live it. Begin by listing down what you want.

What is stopping you? Here are the most common reasons that stop people from living out their desires.

Is Worrying about making a living stopping you?

Most often what stops people from expressing themselves is that they don’t think that it’s possible to make a living doing what they love to do. Well think again because this belief is a pure result of your earlier conditioning where you were mocked to even think this way.

You might love to just hang out with people. Well, Oprah Winfery makes a fortune doing that. She’s had worse, far worse background than yours, that’s for sure.

A friend of mine from my photography class could never make a photographer. He just liked clicking good pictures while travelling. He wasn’t interested in the commercial side of it but wanted to keep doing it. He’s today an international tour guide, runs an adventure tourism company and makes a living out of just hanging out with people and clicking pictures for no one else.

I realized that I love to read, learn and share with others what I learnt. It’s not impossible to make a living doing that.

If you love sports, you could play, be a sportswriter, start a small league.. anything.

It is absolutely possible to make money doing anything that you want to and I can guarantee its possible in it to make more than what you do currently.

Is worrying about how to provide for your family stopping you?

In our ‘corporate job’ world this is perhaps the biggest reason. “I can do but I now have a family to provide for.”

I can empathize with you, understand this but there is something I will never do and urge you also to never do – sympathize with you.

If family has become a weakness instead of strength, you are teaching and transferring a very ‘defeating’ value to your children.

Lower your expenses. Get rid of the loans (with the loaned properties), lower your current standard of living just for a life so you can have it much higher in a little bit of time through your desires.

You see what’s really stopping you is not this stupid excuse, it’s what other will say or think if you actually did this.

Here is something else I learnt from my photography teacher while one day I was feeling shy to kneel down in a crowded up-market mall to take a picture. He said to me and I repeat this to you, “What other people think of you is none of your business.”

Fearing Criticism

Fear of criticism, being spoken off or being ridiculed achieves just one thing. It destroys your imagination. Think back, when you were criticized as a child whether by your parents or by a teacher or by a friend – all it achieved at that moment and time was to destroy your belief in what you were thinking or saying at the moment.

Its not the belief that was incorrect. Its today not the desire that isn’t the right thing to do. Its simply a fear (that too conditioned fear) that’s stopping you.

Think about it. Firstly others don’t have the time to think about you. They never did. Secondly you will never know even if they did. Its your conditioning that leads you to perceive that they are thinking. It was used as a ploy to get you back on ‘world track’. It doesn’t literally mean that people think. And even if they do – SO What?

But my health?

“My health isn’t what it used to be.”

Yes it will never be. Ill health is itself a result of an unexpressed life leading to an undesirable emotional state and thus manifested in physical symptoms.

A recent study by a reputable physician lists that 75% of all people who visit physicians are suffering from imaginary illnesses. This basically means that 75% of the time you feel ill, it is just in your mind. Think well and you will probably be well.

And what about when am Old

Another falsified belief that may stop people and I know personally a few who are stopped by this is ‘What if’

What if I do not succeed then what will happen to me when I grow old and lose my freedom and independence. Will I then have enough to get by.

Notice the people who pursue desires. There isn’t a retirement age.

The most common cause of fear of old age is associated with the possibility of not having enough money.

From my experience of studying successful people and the not so successful ones there are three observations I’d like to share.

One that if you aren’t pursuing what you love you will get old faster.

Two the people who aren’t pursuing what they love will anyway (to appease others) run out of their savings far sooner than the one’s who do and thus land up in this place almost as a self fulfilling prophecy.

Three people who live a compelled life, sadly die very soon upon retirement.

You can google the three statements and I can guarantee you that you will find credible research to prove this to you.

We worry about the life gone by and about the conditioning that led us here. Though it is not within our power to change the past. Yet as I wrote earlier, in this miraculous existence called life, in this our only chance, life gives us countless attempts.

What are your desires? What do you want? Don’t let the imaginary walls such as the ones written above stop you because you deserve better. Think of what did you want to be when you grew up? And then finally  - Grow Up. The only way out is through.

Yours

Chetan Walia