Freedom

‘Freedom to Fail’

~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

These words contain a dichotomy. How can someone be given the room to fail?

And yet, they are magical. For in these words, lie the very essence of why someone succeeds…

A couple of weeks ago, I watched a new TV series on how India’s biggest watch company, Titan, came into existence.

It was a great reminder of the heroic power of entrepreneurship and the persistent belief to make it happen.

The biggest line that remained with me post the watch, was “freedom to fail”!

It was used by the protagonist to egg on his team after an abject failure. And by his mentor, silently, to convey his confidence in his protege.

In the past couple of weeks, as I often thought about it, I realised how important it is in our life too.

Ask a parent about how their child grew up. Most likely because they let her have the freedom to fail. When she was taking her first steps, or when she was rushing to make friends, or when she was trying to learn a new skill. They didn’t judge her or stop her from doing those things.

Ask a teacher about her best students. She allowed them to experiment and learn, rather than stopping them from anything. Even her worst students were allowed the freedom to fail, in the hope that they will rise some time.

Ask a husband about his wife. How they became successful in their marriage because they allowed each other the freedom to be themselves and fail at a few things when it came to each other’s expectations. And in doing so, how they learnt to stand by each other during the toughest times, even though they may have failed on a simple occasion.

Or ask anyone who succeeded in a corporate job, how they reached where they are. I doubt if we will find even one case where they would not have encountered a senior who had allowed them to falter and yet succeed in the longer run.

You see, it is this freedom to fail that gives anyone the confidence to succeed. That is why the child, the student, the spouse, or the teammate get past hurdles in life and learn to live.

And yet, the first thought that comes to mind when we hear these three words is, “oh, that’s strange!”.

It is perhaps our conditioning that needs to change…

How far would you go?

~ Rishi ~ Leave a comment

On everything? Really. Have we thought about it?

On life. Should I want to live life king size at all costs and be ready to do whatever may be required for it? Or should I be ready to draw a line somewhere and stay within that for my own heart’s sake?

On work. Should I compete with all others and do everything that’s required to reach the summit? Or should I balance things with a perspective of reaching where I intend to reach, without considering myself in a race?

On relationships. Should I do everything to take care of my relationships and maintain them, come what may? Or should I accept the strain or tension that some of them may imply, either vitiating myself or severing those ties, if it ever comes to that?

On health. Should I adopt habits that help me take care of myself for years to come and be conscious of my lifestyle choices even at the expense of my happiness? Or should I not worry too much about it and enjoy things that I like and live as I want to, postponing the worries to sometime in the future.

On wealth. Should I focus on earning more and saving more to ensure I can live comfortably later on? Or should I spend on things I want right now and assume the future will sort itself out and we will cross the bridge when we get there.

On ethics. Should I always have a upright stance on everything and morally do the right thing, even if it lands me in trouble or pulls me back? Or should I be ok to tweak things a bit to benefit myself in the spirit of being always successful?

On feelings. Should I be straight forward with them and let them be visible to others, even in difficult times? Or should I hide my true self from the world and put on a game face if required?

These are all difficult questions. Perhaps with no right answer.

This week, as I went through life in the wake of the new year, some of these thoughts occurred to me. Not in terms of making decisions about these points myself but generally, as something that I haven’t thought about explicitly.

Yet as I reflected more, I realized that most of us make one or the other choice on these spectrums in different points in our life. Some of these choices are made explicitly and some implicitly.

What matters is the understanding of the mechanism we use to make these choices – the inner workings of our head and our heart, combined with our circumstances and the atmosphere around us. Along with complete ownership of our decision and consciousness about our choices.

For that helps us be truthful about whether the choice we made was right or wrong, depending on the results and the path it led us to. And more importantly, allows us the freedom within to not be trapped eternally within those choices but to make corrections if needed or choose the next fork in our life’s journey…