“If you study well, you will get good marks” said one of my teachers during her last class for us before our 12th standard exam. Innocently, one of my friends shouted from behind “That we know, Madam”. Fellow toastmasters and distinguished guests, the unknown fact is how to study well amidst fear of failures. Generically put the fact unknown is how to fine tune our mind to amuse its engine, the body, to perform the desired tasks when the ghostly eyes of failure stare on.
It was the winter of 1306, and Robert Bruce, newly crowned king of Scotland, sat shivering and hungry in a tiny hut on an Irish island. He had lost six battles against King Edward 1 of England. In the hut Bruce saw a small spider busily at work making her web. He watched as she struggled to attach one of her strands to a wooden rafter. Again and again, a blustery wind would sneak through the cracks of the hut and shake the thread loose. Again and again, she would begin the task of attaching it once more. “You’ve also tried six times and failed, my friend,” Bruce told her. “Why don’t you give up?” But she seemed not to hear. Patiently, a seventh time, she spun a thread, drew it to the rafter, and this time . . . it held! “My most humble apologies,” said Bruce. But when he said his apologies his face beamed with confidence and enthusiasm. The inspired Robert Bruce returned to Scotland, gathered his men and eventually defeated the English.
When the king sat shattered in the hut, can you imagine the situation if somebody would go and tell the king “If you fight well you will win the battle”. The King definitely would have started a battle not with the English, but with the person who told so. In reality, the king had the spider as his model to look upon for encouragement, motivation and inspiration to move from failure to success.
The king was inspired but the inspiration was not build to a beautiful web as the spider did. He scaled up his source of inspiration – the spider-his model and went on to win the war. Modeling need not be in this same fashion .It could be an exact replica – like getting inspired from the elder brother to get first rank in the class .It could even be scaled down version .For instance a person who look upon the former president of USA, Abraham Lincoln .He may eventually be inspired to win the post of Panchayat President. There is no point in saying one mode of modeling is better than the other. If anything that can provide you that instantaneous spark of inspiration that is the best. If that does not happen naturally you need not sit idle waiting for that moment to happen. You can choose an appropriate model and start giving positive suggestion to your mind until you derive that spark.
How the modeling is done also assumes significance. A person trying to be patriotic may opt Bhagat Singh as model. But if the suggestion he gives to the mind is like “he had to suffer a lot and finally had to bear the pain of gallows”; his patriotism may not blossom. But the same case can be paraphrased as” he sacrificed his life for the country and the fruit of that sacrifice is our freedom”. Our mind is more likely to take this suggestion positively and the person would be inspired to be more patriotic.
It is true that some failures can condition your mind to failure. Modeling is a suggestion to the mind which can effectively decondition the state of failure.Lets have a model to admire and our state can change.After some failures you may be thinking “If there ever was a time to give up, this is it.” But like Robert Bruce who modeled the spider let your thought also transform by this modelling. “If there ever was a time to make one more try, this is it!” Now is the time. Over to you toastmaster
(The description of the spider story is inspired)
(Project 4 of CC)
Watch the video at : http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=7CSoHfz63CU
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