The magic of doing it all over again!

I had this wonderful finance professor at our MBA College who was a bundle of energy, passion and commitment all rolled up into one. She had the power to positively affect the students whom she dealt with during our college years.

I was fortunate to be one of them. Through this post I would like share an incident which happened two years ago.  The learning was deep and something which I have been following since then and has positively affected my way of living

Pause

This was somewhere in 2006; also the time when a social networking site called Orkut was the latest fad. Just about everybody was on orkut. In fact it used to be a benchmark to determine an individual's popularity.  The higher the number of friends/fan/scraps the more popular he was considered. Not to mention the number of testimonials. 

People used to bribe friends to write fake testimonials, pseudo accounts were created to increase the number of scraps/friends/fans. It was the time that everybody preferred to scrap instead of smsing…

I strongly believe the reason for orkut success was due to the fact that we love to peep into others life (and photographs!) and orkut provided the platform to do so. Sanity has returned of late and orkut has provisions of restricting only friends to read scraps and view photos…

I too was addicted with orkut. Had good number of friends and many scraps to my credit, though only a few testimonials; in fact only two. And the one by my sister also vanished when she deleted her account. And so that left me with just one testimonial which happened to be written by my finance professor who I was referring to at the beginning of this blog. That also was my first testimonial and special in many ways. Testimonials are really beautiful, I mean somebody actually takes time out and writes something good about you in public domain without expecting a testimonial back from you ( I know the last point is important as sometimes it ends up becoming a barter …I write for you and you write for me).  Was really very proud of that testimonial.

However that feeling was short lived. A few days later, this testimonial too disappeared! And I was now left with none. Not that it effected me (now isn’t this a lieJ) but after having seen the beautiful words written about myself I felt sad that it had gone and worse I had not even saved it!  I wondered why my professor deleted her account.

I happened to call my professor some days later to understand the reasons for her action.

I came to know that she had left our institute a few months ago and had joined some other institute. Her leaving our institute was a great loss as she was one of the best we had and had been involved with the institute since its inception years. More so her connect with the students was extremely strong.  I’m sure everyone in the institute had tried to persuade her to stay back but having known her i'm sure that she would have really thought it over before taking this decision

Orkut is generally associated with friends, youth and fun…very rarely have I seen any professor being so active on orkut but here was a different case altogether. In fact even after she left the institute many of her students were connected to her via orkut. And she happened to be one of the most admired personalities on orkut. You should only check her profile to believe what I am trying to say. Over 500 friends (mostly students) , 300 fans, over 30 emotional testimonials from her students. What more could a teacher ask for. The love and acknowledgment of her students for whom she toils day and night is probably the ultimate testimony of her work

However precisely because of this reason she was not able to let go of her old institute. It constantly reminded her of the institute and probably came her way in adjusting to her new environment. Having spent so many years at the old institute a part of her was always there. And it’s certainly not easy to adjust to a new surrounding where people don’t know you. She was trying hard to let go of the past and concentrate on the new job assignment however orkut always bought memories of the old institute

So one day she took a really bold decision. She felt that she really needs to move on and let go the past.  She decided to delete her orkut profile.

Now some may argue what is the big deal to delete a profile. But one only needs to see the love and emotions showered on her by the student on orkut to be able to understand the greatness of her decisions. She was not married at that point of time and teaching was one of the most important priorities. Orkut, where she connected with her students had become a part of her life. And by deleting it, in a way, she was letting go of her happiness. I mean how many people do that willingly. Even today I respect her for what she did.

She told me that she had let gone of orkut for some time till she gets back to normalcy with her new life. She promised that she would return in some month’s time

She taught me something very important here. By deleting the orkut profile she lost all the lovely testimonials, scraps which had been written for her. I thought she could have avoided losing all the lovely scraps/testimonials by simply not logging onto orkut for some months. However I later realized that it’s not the right way and she would never have been able to let go this way. To really let go you need to pluck it from the source. You need to experience the pain of losing everything to really move on…

I further asked her on the various testimonials which her students had written for her. Wouldn’t they feel bad about this? After all they had written something very beautiful. Also she had written many testimonials for many of her students (including me). They too have been lost. Could she have done something else so that this could have been avoided?

She said that before deleting her profile she had taken a print of all the testimonials written by her students which she will cherish forever because probably she knew all may not be able to write a testimonial for her again. Also once back on orkut she promised to write testimonials for all her students whom she had written for and got deleted

I asked her whether she had taken a copy of these too which would have made it easier later on to write again. She said that she would write the testimonials all over again.  I was surprised.

Till that day I always found it difficult to re-write something which had been lost due to some reason. I always felt that the best comes out when you write it the first time!

However what she said was very beautiful.

When I tried to understand from her whether the new testimonial would be the same as it were the first time around.  “It’s always more beautiful the second time around, you should try”. I mean this was just one of the statement made by her but which affected me very deeply

Pause

In our everyday life we encounter with so many situations where we are required to do things the second time over. And more often than not it’s very frustrating. We always believe that getting first time right is only way. But it’s not always possible.

We need to realize that we may fail the first time. Here failure does not necessarily have to do with any negative connation but may also mean that the work which was started remained incomplete. It could be smaller issues like a long sms which one had just typed and forgotten to save or some important slides of a presentation which disappeared due to power failure or major issues like a relationship gone wrong with your friend, partner, girlfriend, and parents.

When things go wrong/fail we start cribbing and quickly jump to the conclusion that it was never meant to happen and that it is a failure. We simply close our doors for any further corrective measures. Thinking that it may never work the same way. And hence we just don’t attempt to write that important sms with the same passion as one wrote it the first time simply for the fact that we think that words once written don’t come back; we waste time ruining over the fact that if power failure had not happened then the presentation would have been far better (as the earlier content was superior). Issues on which one has fought with their friends/partners/girlfriend/parents seem to be irrecoverable and considered to be the end of relationship

What this incident taught me was simply the fact we need to give ourselves that second chance. And it’s our inner self that needs to start believing it. Believing that there is a life in that second chance and we need to do full justice to it.  Cause many times even without this self belief we continue to write that sms, the presentation or continue the relationship. But unfortunately its not with the awareness that sometimes doing it all over again would make it more beautiful.  If done with complete awareness you will realize how the magic works. When you start to believe that second time over things will be better there you act differently. And it shows in your actions and results

It worked for me in more ways than one.

So some time back when I typed a long sms and suddenly it went blank instead of cribbing I happily decided to write it all over again. And the magic was that it sounded even better than the first time….something which I never thought was possible. Now when i lose some presentation content because of the failure to save it , I don’t waste even a minute in cribbing over it, immediately start working on it again believing that it will be even better next time around. And it works. A failed relationship does not come in my way of believing that it can be more beautiful the second time around. And its workingJ

And what’s more the biggest example is this blog itself…. I had written a few paragraphs of this blog few months back. Tried searching for it today when I sat down to complete however could not find it. So instead of searching I simply re-wrote the whole thing. And I felt really good about it ….Its the magic of doing things all over again. If we have that self belief it work out even better. Everyone needs to give others and oneself that second chance

If we believe in this we don’t really have to worry about losing anything because we are inherently confident that we can re-create whatever has been lost all over again. Sure sometimes even second times things don’t work out but what’s important is we are positive and that’s what makes all the difference. The power of believing that one can do it all over again.

And you know what after a few months my professor wrote that testimonial for me second time over. And believe me it was magical!

Perspectives.....

(All Content including Pictures are Copyrighted 2006- 2008 © Stevan Noronha. Copying or Using the content without permission is punishable and offenders will be liable for prosecution.)