I was walking in a 10 miles stretch walking park. I remember some people were crossing me. They were maintaining the same speed as of mine. It was just that, they focussed on their preparatory effort with whole attention on their next step. When they crossed me, I took that experience as easy. I was just walking… Why take it as competition… Probably, the other person who was crossing me was stepping with more preparatory focus enjoying his journey, one step ahead compared to me. Instead of taking that as motivation to strengthen my focus on my walk, I took that as easy… The reality was that, the other person was mile away compared to me in next 10 minutes.
Similarly,
when I observed a senior film actor of Telegu industry, I see he was charismatic,
fit and healthy. When I see his own brother, his own brother was reflecting the
tread of the age and was looking quite aged and unhealthy. At their childhood,
both the famous film actor and his brother were looking the same good looking.
What has caused his brother to look so much aged when both brothers started
their journey on the same platform for some years?. Probably he has taken easy
that extra step of his brother crossing him in the walk of the journey…When we
look both of them now, it is so evident they look like father and son, instead
of own brothers… What has caused this?. Taking this extra step easy…
Similarly, I experienced such scenario with regards to
students as well. There were two students who start their 11th grade
on the same bench of the same class (Let us say Student-A & Student-B). Student-A got more
good percentage compared to Student-B in their 10th class. They both
sat on the same bench for 11th and 12th classes listening
to the same set of teachers. At the end of 12th class, it came out that Student-B who gets less marks in his class 10th, shows brilliant performance in graduation
entrance exams such that Student-A finds himself miles behind of Student-B…
Why?.. This student A did not take that extra focused preparatory step of Student-B seriously.. Instead, Student-A took that step quite easy….
Similarly,
an entrepreneur who was doing great job in his surviving years does not
show enough alertness to that extra step of market competition finds himself
way behind his competition. why… He did not take that extra focused preparatory
step with sense of alertness
Does this mean,
we have to win the competition with others always.. No.. We have to compete
with our own yesterday with better preparation to invent our own tomorrow. Yes,
we compete with ourselves for a better tomorrow. The key is that we want to
have those focused preparatory extra steps day after day…. Why?
As Vince Lombardi says “Everyone has a will to win but very few have the will to prepare to win”
True.. everyone
wants good future .. but they will not prepare well to win. However, very few people will have the will to prepare to win.
Preparation
is the necessary edge to succeed in any field. It is easy to be average but
tough to be the best. The average people take the easy way. However, winners
put pressure on themselves in planning and preparation. Winners do not worry about wining, however
they feel the pressure of better preparing towards their goals.
Then what exactly is preparation?... As Shiv Khera says in his famous book "You can win", preparation has below elements
1. Purpose : What is my goal? Why do I need to achieve the goal?
2. Principle: Winners always choose values and principle based path
3. Planning: They divide their ultimate goals into weekly and daily goals and plan to achieve them
4. Practice: We play as we practice. The difference between success and failure is the difference between doing exactly right and almost right.
5. Perseverance: In the pursuit of achieving our journey, there comes lot of hurdles that question our fundamentals. We need to whither those odds and stay focused on achieving our goals
6. Patience: We should not get disheartened when we lose few matches. It’s the patience that carves the path towards jubilant future.
7. Pride: Take pride in our preparation.
Thus, let us exhibit the will to prepare to make that extra focused effort so that we compete with our yesterday for a better tomorrow. In this process, even we lose, we end up having confidence that “we did our best preparation in this mission”. The fact remains “our preparation is only in our hands… not the results”… We derive our courageousness from our confidence that we PREPARED well to WIN.