Are we controlling these events or Are the events conrolling us?
Is it possible to predict these events or are we always taken by surprise?

Sometimes experience and expertise can lead us to a comfort zone making us condition ourselves to a set pattern of expectations to events and the subsequent reactions. A case in point is the example of cooking. Mothers / wives and in many cases the husbands also indulge in cooking. I have seen my mother put the gas cylinder on in the morning and then shut it off only after the last cooking for the day is done, say at night. Although the gas companies cry hoarse saying that it is dangerous to leave the gas cylinder on and it is prudent to shut it off as and when the cooking is done. However If I tell my mother this her immediate reaction would be..”But I have been cooking for 40 years…. nothing has happened” . I am very surprised at this kind of a reaction and it makes me wonder whether these people are waiting for something to happen in order to realise.

I find the same kind of reaction from many leading professionals in organizations as well. Now, why can’t we look at an alternative point of view? Why is it that people have become robotic about set patterns? Why can’t we question the basis of anything and everything?

Let us understand that all these are nothing but choices waiting to be made. As one disgruntled Executive told me in one of my training programs, “Sir its my bad time that I had to join this organization”. I had to remind him that it was his decision and not his time. He still had a choice to make. But having made the choice of joining, I told him that he bloody well do a damn good job as it was his decision and finding excuses is akin to insulting his own decision making process.

Life is full of Choices. Don’t allow a chance to spoil your choice………..

Ramakrishnan Murali Shankar
muralishankar@thinkfuture.co.in