I realised many summers ago that the way you react can often shape the outcome of events. Few of us understand this fact and most of us go blithely through life carrying on as we have always done; never re-living, or re-learning, from our actions. And as explained in my tenth column, our acts also affect our Destiny in the long run.
It is memorable that I remembered this incident on a day that is celebrated as Father’s Day. This is an incident with my father which taught me a lot about action and reaction. My father was a clerk in the forest department in Shimla, and he had access to the secondary results a day or two in advance. I was not a bright student and we were not even a middle-class family; our outings to a restaurant were limited to just once in six months. So two days before my matriculation results, when my father invited me to a restaurant, I was extremely curious what the occasion was all about. After feasting on kachoris and samosas, and still wondering about the reason for the feast, my father said, “Son, I have to give you some sad news; you have failed in the matriculation exams… And this feast is to tell you to never be ever scared of failure.”
I have learnt many things from my father, but the most memorable of them all was this one incident when he did not condemn my failure but instead, handled it with care. In today’s scenario when you hear of so many tragedies over failure, I truly realise the extraordinary emotional quotient of my Dad.
Decades have passed since that incident, but I find a similar approach detailed as the 90:10 Principle by one of the most famous management thinkers, Stephen Covey. Basically, he states that 10 per cent of life is made up of what happens to you; 90 per cent of life is decided by how you react. Covey illustrates his Principle with an example of how you can react if your daughter spills coffee on your shirt as you are leaving the house. One scenario: You shout at your daughter (and she breaks into tears!), you shout at your wife for keeping the coffee mug too close to the edge; both of you get into an argument; you change your shirt hurriedly and then rush through — forgetting your briefcase — and the cop halts you for speeding, fines you and delays you… And so it goes on through the day. You could have another scenario: You could tell your daughter to be more careful the next time, change your shirt unhurriedly and pick up your briefcase on the way out and drive away peacefully!
Both the scenarios began the same way but they ended dramatically differently. Why? Because of your reaction. It is time that we realised that our reactions are game-changers for better or worse. It can make our life; or it can mar it. That is why I believe that our Destiny is often in our hands.
The writer is a renowned
film and theatre actor