Are you a product of your choices or consequences?
Prashant Panigrahi at TCS
Cloud Digital Delivery Director II Business Excellence Assessor II 6-Sigma Black-Belt II Author II Self Actualization Coach II
?Do we know what is the right choice in every life-situation and circumstance? So often, people waste time in negative thinking when they encounter a problem or challenge. They spend precious minutes of their lives complaining to others about how bad things are or they sit around and dwell on their negative emotions. All these aspects pull them in to a trap aversion and craving; which compels their being to get entangled with process and consequences. In simple, their “self” (or life) gets entangled with circumstance and??life-situation. On the contrary, each minute they waste complaining and wallowing could have been spent trying their conscious choice instead of compulsion.
Every choice we make impacts our wellbeing in both dimension; the inner as well as outer. Generally, the compulsive choice has automatic and primary preference towards outer-wellbeing as it serves our self-centric and egoist self. However, the conscious chose; which is taken in absence of aversion, craving and entanglement, repurposes the choice and preference of mind towards inner-wellbeing. This is because a conscious mind knows; good consequence or outer-welling is a default by-product of conscious choice along with the product of inner wellbeing. It also knows, the conscious choice and inner-wellbeing brings maturity to “self” or life. Hence, Stephen Covey states:?
“I am not a product of my circumstances.?I am a product of my decisions.”
Tata Motors launched India's first fully designed and built indigenous car, the Tata Indica, in 1998. However, sales were poor, and Tata was forced to sell the car manufacturing unit. In 1999, they decided to negotiate a deal with the American automaker Ford. Ratan Tata and his team flew to the United States and met with Bill Ford, the then-chairman of Ford. Bill Ford made derogatory remarks such as, "Why did Tata get into manufacturing without knowing anything about car production?" Ford stated that if he purchases a Tata car unit, he will be doing Tata a favour; they still need to reach an agreement. Mr. Ratan Tata accepted his life situation as it came. Then it's only his courage to embrace the mortifying experience that led him to navigate the situation with greater focus, emotional calmness, and playfulness. He consciously choose not to sell the production unit, in spite of his friends distancing themselves from him with a perception of stupidity.
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What happened next is one of the best failure-turned-success stories in business history. After nine years, the United States experienced a recession, and Ford went bankrupt. Tata stepped in and offered to purchase Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR) for a total of $2.3 billion cash price. And Ford said that "Tata did a favor's for Ford by buying JLR." Definitely, it is an act of conscious choice from Mr. Ratan Tata against the mortifying experience he had; he requested Ford to buy Tata Motor at the time of its crisis.
? Only people at his consciousness knows, when you jump into Sage-ness fearlessly Smart-ness is an automatic by-product. ?Hence, with this kind of conscious choices, he not only exemplified his courageous-being and high-conscious-self without a pinch of pride, he surprised the whole world by transforming JLR into one of the industry's most profitable automakers. He is a true inspiration and icon for transformation as well as transcendence. Hats-off to his true-being.
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? ?Many times, the circumstance or life-situation is not in our control, however making choices is in our control. And life's growth depends mostly on the type of choice we make’ conscious or compulsive. Hence Charles Swindoll also makes a profound statement about our choice.?He said:
“Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.”?
? For a coincidence, we have letters “C” between “B & D”; i.e., choices to make in between birth and death; which will distinguish us in this world. Hence, once we make choices of Sage-ness in life, the consequence will be an automatic by-product reverberating with Smart-ness.
?Kindly share your views in comments.
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Business Relationship Manager| TCS Gold Mentor| Empower Individuals to take action| Purpose Coach| Avid Runnner
1 年Insightful post Prashant Panigrahi at TCS
Distinguished Research Fellow at DRaS
1 年Being human , many times we don’t take conscious decisions but react to situations , especially in younger years , by the time you grow old and think of inner consciousness, it is late and you are a product of circumstances!
Chief Mentor & Strategic Advisor, KSOM
1 年Very well articulated. Though our birth and death are not based on our choice, the continuum within, that is called ‘life’ is greatly shaped by our choices we make and the decisions we take. Though sometimes we flow with the current and the momentum takes care of few things that come our way. As for our choices, quite often we have blinkers on and we only see the obvious ones, ignoring the other possibilities. If we open the blinkers the spectrum of choices widens. But if we still haven’t got the optimal choice we need not give up. Then it’s the time for design thinking. We then ‘create’ our choices!