“If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you can’t.”

This quote speaks a lot. Your attitude plays a big role in what happens to you throughout your life. Your happiness and sadness depends a lot on your attitude. The lens through which you see the world, defines your world. If you try and change or adjust this lens a little, you realize that things are not as bad or as good as you thought they are. Suddenly you realize a different kind of potential within you.

Let’s understand this with an example. I, as a spoken English coach, get a lot of course inquiry calls every day. Most of the learners tell me that they want to learn English. And when I talk to them, I see a lot of them can already talk in English. They just don’t use the English they know already. They want to learn more first. What they think is that first they will learn English and then they will speak. This is the problem.

Thinking you will learn first and speak later is like thinking you will learn swimming first and enter the water later. Do you think you will become confident first and speak confidently later? It will never happen. Do you think you will learn advanced English words first and use them later? It will never happen. Do you think you will become fluent without putting in hours and hours of efforts? It will never happen. It cannot happen. How can it? Learning and growing happen simultaneously. Like a seesaw:

Confidence comes from trying and failing and trying and failing and trying and failing. Confidence is not about the result. Confidence comes with efforts. For instance, let’s say you start a business and you invest your 3 years and Rs. 1 crore in that business. After 3 years, your business fails. Will it bring your confidence down? Ideally, it won’t because that failure will give you more experience. You will learn how to fail successfully. You will know which mistakes to avoid. After a business failure your ego might also dissolve a little. But the very process of starting the business will give you confidence.

Now you may say that you have seen many cases where business failures have brought people’s confidence down. Well, that’s probably because they were wearing the wrong lenses. They think one business failure will define their whole life. They are scared of failing. They think failing is a crime. They think failure means death. THAT’S NOT TRUE.

Failure and success are just two sides like day not night. Night does not means darkness forever and day does not means light forever. Everything in nature has a balance. Day & night. Male & female. Love & hate. Life & death. Good & bad. Rich & poor. Powerful & powerless. And the list goes on……… & off. 😉

If at night you think now everything will be dark forever, that’s your problem. If you then take stress and lose hopes of light, that’s your problem. There is nothing good and nothing bad. Reality is reality. It’s just your perception that makes things good and bad. The smartest person, in my eyes, is someone who can be ‘in between’. Someone who is not very sad in the darkness and not very proud in the light because he knows it will change. If you stay in between, you will be able to see both. The day you detach yourself from good and bad, you will find new eyes, new lenses and new vision within you.

Then you will not worry about making mistakes. Then you will not worry about what people think of you. Then you will not worry about guarding your image and reputation. You will just focus on your work. That’s what Krishna taught Arjuna:

“कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन |”
“मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ||”

“You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.”

This explains everything. Do your work. Start now. Don’t wait for perfection. It does not exist. Just speak speak & speak. Just write, write & write. You will grow, your confidence will grow, your knowledge will grow and your fluency will grow. I promise.