Nikitha
One of my favourite poems in my mother tongue says
“Listen to what everyone says. Analyse those words. Separate the truth from the lies and then follow the advice.”
Even though I memorised hundreds of poems in school, this is one of the few poems which stuck with me. By god’s grace, I still follow it.
Following which brought me a lot of good things in life and also a lot of suffering too. I suffered because I doubted the advice which professionals gave. So I had to go through entire loop of failure and success.
Keeping that aside, here is what my experience says:
Practice makes man perfect:
I don’t deny this. But it comes with exceptions. If you practise English alphabet everyday, you are definitely going to get good at it. You can tell the alphabet even if I wake you up from your deep sleep in the middle of the night. But can you speak a sentence in English just by knowing the alphabet? You become perfect only in the narrow fixed area. And it becomes a rote memory. Where is the logic? Where is becom
ing better in that?
I once saw a friend preparing for a test. She took an A4 sheet. Wrote the same symbol all over the paper till no space was left. Mind you, she was a 10 pointer. If getting a 10 pointer involves doing that, I never wanted one. I was happier figuring out how to think analytically. Ultimately do what makes you happy. Or what matters more for you. The end result or the means.
On a different note, I practise the same exercise everyday. The pain and strain which I feel on the first day, I no longer feel it on the 30th day. My body just got used to it. Yeah, you are right. Practise made me perfect. But once it got used to it, it does not give me any new results. The fat stops melting. For what fun does it have to melt?
But yeah practise makes man perfect. But just think if it is what you want.
Expect different results by doing the same thing:
Don’t you think it is the opposite of ‘Practise makes man perfect’? All through your childhood, you listened to the people telling you practise more, practise more. Now people tell you that you can’t expect the same results by doing the same thing.
To your surprise, I disagree with this quote too.
In ‘Think and grow Rich’, the author wrote about a gold miner who abandoned the mine when he was three feet away from the gold. What if you are that close away before changing your methodology?
You must be thinking “ How do I ever know when to stick and when to give up then?”
Well, don’t worry. It is quite simple. Just take a decision and stick with it.
If you succeed you are lucky. If you fail, you are luckier. You have learned a valuable lesson and your instincts have just become smarter. Fail at the earliest. Fail more now. Fail when you still don’t have a lot to lose. Fail at all small things.
So that once when something big comes your instincts are smart enough to tell you when to quit and when to stay.
Happy analysing!