Of Being Proactive And Carving One's Own Destiny!



'If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it.' - Jonathan Winters

There are two ways to live life - either take control of it yourself, or to let life control you. By taking control, we just do not take over the rights to our life, but we also take up all the responsibilities it brings.

Have you read the book The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People? It has been written by Stephen R Covey and is an international bestseller under the genre of self-help books. The author begins by highlighting the habits that successful and effective people follow, and the very first habit is - Be proactive.

Being proactive means taking control of your own life and the situations. It means not waiting anymore for the 'right' opportunity or the 'right' moment, but creating one on your own. It means recognizing and seizing the millions of tiny chances that spring up in our daily life and make good use of them. 

The lure of victim-mentality is too strong to resist, I know. How comfortable it is, to let someone else decide for us, usher us into a path which we did not want to set out into, in the first place, and then blame those people for any failures we might encounter! How glorious to have someone else to blame, other than ourselves, right?! No, wrong. This is just reacting on our part. Being proactive requires of us to realize that our life is of our own making, and at any given point of time, we have the ability in us to change it for the better. 

Be your own help! If the ship doesn't come to you, swim to the ship! Do not wait for any opportunity to come knocking into your life. The secret is, we create our own opportunities by being proactive. Clearing the mind off the clutter of regrets and excuses, be aware of the day that life has ushered in, see how you can wring the best out of it and act accordingly. Just brooding on 'could-have-been' or 'should-have-done' is not going to get us anywhere. The time to act is NOW. The time to do is NOW. THIS moment is the opportunity you have been waiting for! Seize it!

Clarity of mind is a pre-requisite to take control of your life. A mind still living in the past and brooding under regrets, or the mind already living in the future and worrying about things yet to happen, is not at all conducive to being proactive. Being in the present fully aware of what is happening around you, is the key for grabbing opportunities. Be alert, be awake, be ever prepared to take life by its reins! 

A clear mind enables us to have a clear vision of what we seek from life. And a vision that is well-thought over and written down, one step at a time, is half-way to success already. I have emphasized the power of the written word in my earlier blog. The written word is a promise that we make to the Universe, a promise which garners the help of all the Cosmic Forces around us and ends in deliverance. With a clear mind, form a clear vision and write it down step by step.

A goal without a deadline is like a race with no visible end! Keep a reasonable deadline for your goal. Break it down into steps and the time-frame required for each step. The simplicity of breaking your plan into steps and time-frames is seriously under-rated. If only one realised how simpler and easier life becomes when one plans in this way!

Ensure that your goal takes you one step ahead in your evolution, and does not take you one level down. And by evolution, I do not mean simply in the professional sense, but also considering humanitarian values. It is so easy to forget morals and ethics on the path to success; but they catch up in their own sweet time, and any empire/dream built without the foundation of morals and ethics will crumble very soon!

Take as many co-passengers as you can, with you, on the path to success! The road to success need not be lonely. The more the people, the merrier the journey! The achievement of your goals will not give you any pleasure if you left behind, those whom you could have helped. True service is selfless service to mankind!

Be proactive, carve out your own destiny by taking the reins of your life in your hands and direct it to the path of your dreams! 

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