Chinese Bamboo

I was watching a video of Les Brown. A motivational speaker from a time when, well, a long time ago.

He said this amazing thing about the Chinese Bamboo and then I looked it up on Google. It seems when you decide to cultivate the Chinese bamboo for the first season nothing grows. All you see is barren land, the way it was before you put anything into it. You need to, however, keep watering it and fertilizing it for another year. And still! at the end of the second year, you still see nothing on the surface. For the entire duration. Every day. You need to keep on diligently watering and nourishing the ground because you have for some godforsaken reason decided to grow Chinese bamboo!

And now it gets worse. The Chinese bamboo takes four frustrating years to break the ground.

For four long years you are watering, nourishing and fertilizing barren land or at least so it seems, to anyone and everyone who sees you at the task.

Some might think you've lost it, many others will voice their opinion on how you are wasting your time and effort for an eternity and have nothing to show for.

Now here the amazing thing about this stubborn, patience testing Mr. Bamboo. Once it breaks the ground after a gestation of four years, within the first season itself, the bamboo grows a massive eighty feet. Almost the entire adult size. EIGHTY FEET! in one year.

The point to ponder on, is did it grow that massive size in the one season that it was shooting towards the sky, or did the growth originate over the four years of diligent and disciplined nurturing? Aren't our goals, and targets very similar to this? Would that shoot have even broken the surface if it weren't watered, and tended to, with unquestioning patience?

For the fitness freaks here. The rest and nutrition that follows all the grunting and pushing in the gym is what results in an admirable self.
For the sports nuts, the numerous hours you put in perfecting a shot, getting your footing right, training in solitude in the mud and grime results in that brief stellar performance applauded by many.

For the suit and tie donning robots, the entrepreneurs and hopeless dreamers, how you tend to your goal when no one's watching you, with nothing on the balance sheet and no swanky office yet to show for, through the storm of doubting and questioning looks results in something worthy of praise and admiration from those very disbelievers.

Now that you are done reading this. Pick up that bucket and go water your bamboo.
(yuck, that sounds cheesy)

Better sore than sorry

The only one thing that you can do today to get you one step closer to
where you often wish you were, is action. When you get up change and walk out the front door, your body, that voice in your head that urges you to sleep some more or laze it off, has no choice but to kit up and come along with you.

Its amazing how many of us complain of running out of breath or lack of energy to take you through the course of your week, or an increasing tendency to do nothing and laze off entire evenings or afternoons or day dream about being on the field.
While the solution is well within our reach.
Living in Pune we are never too far away from a hill-side for a jog, or a school/coll ground, or a badminton court to get together and play, or a space within your society to throw some hoops, swim or run.

I'm certain of the 24 hours that we have so meticulously divided and dedicated to dinners, parties, get togethers, roaming around and doing nothing; we can manage to make an hour or two of fitness time to do some good to a body put through much neglect and abuse.

And since all of you have been engaged in sports at some point in time in the past, ask yourself if you have ever been put through a grueling practice session, or ran till sweat drips off your chin, or pushed a few more repetitions than usual and woken up the next day to regret it.
Never isn't it? Maybe a little sore, but never sorry.

So why stop now?
Wake up. Don't hit snooze. Kit up. Get out.

Mind over matter

We are surrounded by naysayers and disbelievers.

People who will enlist a truckload of reasons why you will fail on a chosen path before they can point out one reason why you should go for it. It becomes increasingly difficult to ignore those voices when they come from your close ones. Friends and family especially. But that’s when you reach for and hold on tightly to one inalienable truth. What you can and cannot do depends majorly on what you think you are capable of. The most powerful, versatile and equally volatile weapon at your behest is your mind and how you control what goes on within it. Let me stop before I get too preachy and ask you to retrospect. When was the last time you were up against a formidable task. An opponent on the field, a mountain to climb, a deadline too close, a challenge deemed grueling and too difficult but you decided to take it on nevertheless and prevailed. Try and think about your state of mind then and I’m sure one of the main reasons you overcame was merely because you believed you could. Strongly and firmly. And no matter what happened around you or what people said, you knew deep down you could and everything else followed suit when the moment came.

I stumbled on this story recently of how until April 1955 everyone in the world believed that it was impossible for mankind to break the 4 minute barrier. They believed it was impossible for anyone to run a mile under 4 minutes. And then along came a certain Roger Bannister who proved them wrong. The significance of this story is what happened after that. Since that day till today, over twenty five thousand people have broken that barrier and many of them include high school kids. Twenty five thousand! Do you know what changed?

When the people after bannister stepped on the track, they knew that someone else had done it before them. They knew it was not impossible. They believed that if he could they could too. The key word here is they believed.

This true story exemplifies the power of your own mind. Of belief. When training at the highest level most of the trainers put their teams and athletes through session of what is commonly called visualization. The sportsmen are asked to isolate and focus on what they need to do. Visualize themselves run, or hit a ball, or jump a hurdle. Picture them performing that act and here’s the wonder, when they train after, the body performs better. Its almost like your body has been given a step by step handbook of what it is to do and how and it follows it to the ‘T’.

The point I'm trying to make here, is that we all have a want list of thing we would like own, places we would like to be, how we would like to look and feel, podiums we want to stand on and feel what it tastes like to be the best. Things we want to work out for ourselves personally. Professionally. Materialistically. Emotionally.

What if you were told that everything you wanted was possible, all you had to do was believe in yourself with enough conviction to drown out the doubts of others and more importantly yourself. And when you get there and look back what you've just achieved, you will realize you've just broken a mental barrier and now everything else you deem possible is within reach.

As simple as it sounds, it’s not an easy task to do. But once done, nothing is impenetrable.