Know your Role

“Don't think you are, know you are “

The first time I heard this line was when Morpheus was training Neo in the movie “The Matrix “. He was trying to push Neo to hit him harder and faster by making him understand that he has capabilities to be faster. I was in 8^th standard then so didn’t understand this line much.

The second time I heard something like this was last year when I went to one of my finance  teachers to discuss and clear confusions about my future , if it was right for me to take the risk of doing MBA only in finance. He asked me a very simple question “ Rahul why do you think you can do that “ ..I replied “ I think am good in finance “ , to this he gave a fundoo counter reply “ Don’t think u r good at finance…either u r good or u r not…there is nothing to think about it…so go n find out the answer yourself . If you can do that then you won’t think about small issues like risk , fear etc “ . I was amazed that time by what he said. I started to read extra about finance topics to see if I can understand them myself and whether I feel a liking for it and if am good at it, as in if it is actually my strength or weakness. And ola I had a definite answer for it and with it vanished all my fears about choosing the specialization.

With this, I understood it is very important to understand one’s weakness and strengths. If we understand them properly then nothing is impossible to achieve. Well as always, my two favorite movies will explain this thought better.

First of all, my favorite movie “The pursuit of happyness “. Chris Gardner realized that his biggest strength was he was good with numbers and people. The job he tried to pursue in second half of movie needed exactly these two qualities. He gave his best in it and beat all odds to land up with his dream job. This explains what understanding one’s strength can do.

Now the weakness thing. John Nash in “A beautiful Mind “ understood that he had a weakness of seeing imaginary people. A weakness, which in medical terms is known by a disease, called schizophrenia. What others called a disease he made it look like a weakness and conquered it to be a Nobel Prize winner.The first step towards success for him was understanding his weakness and to conquer it.

Wow..There is so much to learn from these two persons.  We spend so much time in trying to understand the world and other people that we forget ourselves. Its not possible for us to control our life completely but I guess we can as shown by these two atleast give a direction to it by understanding our strengths and weaknesses.