June 16, 2014

The Final Technique..

The other day, Ankit came. He has done class 12 and hopes to join a badminton academy. Good choice. I took him to OPD. The OPD was looking something like this in the morning rush hour...
First I gave a demo and then asked him to emulate it. After some cajoling, Ankit came to the front and gave his intro.
Later we sat in the canteen with a Mountain Dew between us. I asked him "before and after" kind of question. His thoughts before and after the big bang..
He said, he was scared before- but now, having done it, he was feeling like Akshay Kumar- Khatron ka khiladi! I may or may not teach him any "techniques". He is young. He might do fine with just this one technique- courage.
My evolution as a counsellor, has left me with some insights. One of these is - we ask for technique and therapist gives us a technique- as a professional service, which can be charged for. We conclude that fluency is the real issue so therapist too agrees and asks us to focus on being fluent. But fluency or lack of it is the surface phenomena, governed by deep undercurrents of how we are feeling at a given moment, in a given situation: how we are feeling about ourselves, the other person and about the task at hand - the task of sharing some information in many instances. In a nutshell, our emotional state.
Many years ago, while driving, a cow suddenly came in my path. I jammed on the breaks. But car kept on moving steadily towards the cow. Fortunately, it was in a low gear and the cow had time to get off the road- as suddenly as it came on. Accident averted, I pulled over, rested my head on the steering, breathed deeply - and tried to understand, what had happened just then. I discovered with a shock - My foot was never on break pedal..!
This is what happens to many of us. We learn techniques with our left brain- and when we panic, right brain (emotions) takes over and we go down the old way. 
Moral of the story: whatever technique you use or practice - ask yourself, is it challenging enough? is it making me more courageous? Is it changing my beliefs and attitude about world and dealing with it? Even if you practiced no technique, but changed your attitude, became more risk-taking, your problems will be over. Now, how to become courageous?
Simple- by doing small acts of courage on a daily basis..
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BTW, the audience clapped for Ankit..

9 comments:

ABHISHEK said...

Dear Sir,
I eagerly wait for your articles which are a class apart, full of hope and reassurance.
Like we know that we need to pour water into the roots of a plant in order to nurture it. Simply washing and polishing the leaves and branches wont help. :)loved it

Ashish Agarwal said...

one of the best articles,I've read on this blow.Simply amazing.

I think more articles of this type should be more frequent here, which is a collective responsibility of all of us because all of us are doing these small-2 courageous acts frequently in our daily lives.

Dinesh said...

Super se upar!! Thank you Sir!!

Satyendra said...

Thank you , Abhishek, Ashish and Dinesh.. !

mitesh said...

Great post sir

mitesh said...

Great post sir ..its courage that we lack

Dhruv said...

Wonderful post :) :). Courage the ultimate technique!

Dhruv said...

Wonderful post :) :). Courage the ultimate technique!

jasbir singh said...

I also clap for Dr. Sachin.

Friends, give a big hand please.