Sometimes a single line you have read somewhere or a line
said to you by someone spurs you to do some extra ordinary things in your life.
Similar thing happened to me when I had been to NES college Bhandup to
organize “Yogathon”. I had read an article of Prakash Iyer – the author of
Habit of Winning wherein he recollects a story his friend from army had
narrated to him a few years ago.
His friend had just completed engineering and was in his
first week at an army school. He was joined by fit and healthy young men who
had just come from the National Defence Academy. During the morning warm ups, they were
assigned a stiff task of running 10 miles. He started the task rather enthusiastically
but was exhausted only halfway through. He started feeling a strong pain in his
knees and felt he would collapse. Seeing his condition the commanding officer
said a famous line that shaped up his life ““Come on, young man. Up till now
you’ve been running with your legs. Now run with your mind!”
These lines worked like a magic when I was doing the Yogathon
challenge at NES College. When I started
the challenge I was unsure of even doing 20 rounds. The maximum I did at home
was 15 rounds. I had come to the event
wearing a jeans pant – the most uncomfortable attire to be in to do
Suryanamaskar. I was first in the
mindset that I would be only demonstrating a few rounds of Suryanamaskars to the
students. The atmosphere in the auditorium in which we were doing namaskars was
so charged up that it spurred me on to continue even after the initial rounds.
When I reached the 30th round I knew I had broken my
barrier. Now everything I was doing was pushing my body beyond limits. Whenever
the thought of giving up arrived in my mind I said to myself “The
accomplishment of this task would be reference point for me that anything is
possible for me if I am ready to stretch a little extra”. I tried to keep negative thoughts away from my
mind. The number of counts were discouraging me and just reminding me that
there was a long way to go, so I stopped listening to the counts. I kept
concentrating on my breathe and my body. I took some deep long breathes to keep
myself energized.
The lines from Prakash Iyer’s article kept ringing in my
ears. I could see some people giving up and complaining about the humidity in
the room. I stopped looking at them. I could see some people doing the asanas
rather effortlessly. I looked at them and gave them a bright smile. They smiled
back and that gave me lot of confidence. Finally the teacher announced it was
90 rounds and only 18 rounds to go. Now I said to myself no use of giving up. I
have reached so far now I have got to get to the shores. I started to think
that so many of friends will be shocked to see me complete the challenge. That
urge to see shocked faces on my friends faces egged me further. I reached 108
and I fell bang on the floor. The satisfaction I felt when I fell on the floor
was unbelievable. The feeling that you gave it your all is so relishing.
This experience I realized that mental strength plays a key role in defining success. It also proved
that refusing to give in to negative-minded people (like in this case who
started complaining and gave up) and following your goal with one-pointed
focus is the only way to success.
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