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Story: Crow, Peacock and Cage (Source: Google Baba)
A crow lived in the forest and was satisfied in life. But one day he saw a swan. “This swan is so white,” he thought, “and I am so black. This swan must be the happiest bird in the world.”
He expressed his thoughts to the swan. “Actually,” the swan replied, “I was feeling that I was the happiest bird around until I saw a parrot, which has two colours. I now think the parrot is the happiest bird in creation.” The crow then approached the parrot. The parrot explained, “I lived a very happy life until I saw a peacock. I have only two colours, but the peacock has multiple colours.”
The crow then visited a peacock in the zoo and saw that hundreds of people had gathered to see him. After the people had left, the crow approached the peacock. “Dear peacock,” the crow said, “you are so beautiful. Every day thousands of people come to see you. When people see me, they immediately shoo me away. I think you are the happiest bird on the planet.”
The peacock replied, “I always thought that I was the most beautiful and happy bird on the planet. But because of my beauty, I am entrapped in this zoo. I have examined the zoo very carefully, and I have realized that the crow is the only bird not kept in a cage. So, for the past few days, I have been thinking that if I were a crow, I could happily roam everywhere.”
Moral of the Story: That’s our problem too. We make unnecessary comparisons with others and become sad. We don’t value what God has given us. This all leads to a vicious cycle of unhappiness. Learn to be happy with what you have instead of looking at what you don’t have. There will always be someone who will have more or less than you have. A person who is satisfied with what he/she has is the happiest in the world.
When we think about qualities to be a rich and successful person, often we think about many qualities. It could be,
- Consistency
- Resilience
- Focused approach
- Killer instinct
- Luck
- Teamwork
- Delegation
- Trust
- Mindfulness etc.
But the one quality which separates successful people from others is their Self-Value. Self-value is what we think about ourselves and what triggers us to take action. There is no second substitute for self-value. Like in the above story of crow, as long as the crow was thinking about becoming someone else, the self-esteem of crow was low. But later after discussing with the peacock, the crow realized that everyone has their challenges and everyone is thinking that the other person is better than them!
The interesting aspect is that successful people never link their success or failure with their self-value. For them, success and failure are a result of their actions. When the actions were adequate, they got what they wanted and when the actions were not sufficient, they could not succeed. But for them, self-value is sacrosanct.
On the other side, the people/organizations who do not succeed consistently are those who are not taking accountability for who they are and are always looking for lame excuses like
- Self-doubt
- Procrastination
- Fear
- Frustration
- Criticism
- Perfection etc.
The best way to keep your self-value high is by being authentic with yourself. The meaning of being authentic with yourself is to honour your word irrespective of any situation. There are three situations where authenticity is a must. They are,
- Self
- Friends/Family
- Workplace
Once we are authentic with ourselves, we will always fulfil our commitment and parallelly, we will never over-commit, because our words and actions are our true identity. When we are true to ourselves, our self-value will remain high and we will be able to achieve whatever we want to.
In any game like Cricket, the top five teams have broadly similar competence & capability and all of them have an equal chance to win any tournament like the World Cup. The only difference which is between the winner and others is that on that day, which team/player had the highest self-esteem about themselves and that creates the ultimate magic.
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