How An Act Of Kindness Taught Me The Lesson – “Just Do It”

How An Act Of Kindness Taught Me The Lesson – “Just Do It”

This article has been inspired from an incidence from my personal life that happened yesterday night (24^th February 2015).  I had gone out for dinner with a friend who also happens to be my gym buddy.  Although, both of us are quite regular going to our gym, we don’t give up on our bad food habits and a lot of time end up eating high calorie food from restaurants.  This is the reason why both of us keep making our wives angry.  Anyways, this article is not about our food habits but about something much more enriching and enlightening.

So, this friend of mine whose name is Utkarsh took me out to dinner last night.  Both of us went to a very famous dhaba/restaurant and after having our dinner were driving back home.  At one traffic signal, I somehow started discussing with him about my and my wife’s desire to start some charity relating to women sanitation.  Both of us for some time have been thinking of working on improving women sanitation for those who reside on the roadside pavements.  Since they don’t have proper houses to stay and suffer from women related hygiene issues, both of us have been thinking of tying up with some NGO.

So, I was mentioning to Utkarsh about our desire to do something on those lines.  When I finished talking to him, he started to speak about one initiative that he and his wife have been doing for some years and after hearing that initiative, I was speechless and at the same time mesmerized.  He told me that at one particular traffic signal near IIT Delhi, whenever he stops his car he is suddenly treated like a celebrity and that’s because all the children at that signal come and stick to his car like honeybees.  On his statement of being a celebrity my natural reaction was to ask him – “Bhai what do you do that makes you a celebrity there”?  And then he told me the following:

Every once a week or in a fortnight, he and his wife stop their car on that signal and ask all the children to reach a roadside dhaba/restaurant that is 50 steps away from the signal.  The dhaba owner knows Utkarsh very well and when the children reach his place he knows Utkarsh is somewhere around.  When the children (generally 10-15 in nos.) reach there, Utkarsh asks everyone what would they like to eat and then without thinking of cost simply orders the food.  The children are told to be completely free in their requests that ranges from chicken, dal, roti, rice, paneer etc.  Whatever they want, they get it.  To ensure other children or their elders do not snatch the food, he asks the dhaba owner to make exactly the same no. of packets as the no. of children and each packer will have each of the item they had requested for.  This means that each packet will typically have one portion each of dal, roti, rice and chicken/paneer.  In order to ensure easy digestion of the food, he would also hand them a coke can/fruit juice.  And then one packet is handed to each of them to enjoy and relish with the drink.

Yesterday night also was one of those nights when I was fortunate to watch this incidence.  By the time he narrated me his awesome initiative, we had reached the same signal but since the car was mine, we weren’t sure if the children would recognize Utkarsh sitting inside the car.  But as they say, “daane daane pe likha hota hai khane wale ka naam” three young girls, aged around 7-8 years saw him and identified by waving their hands.  One of them made a gesture as if she was hungry and requested by making appropriate facial expression if Utkarsh could make the necessary arrangements.  He lowered the windowpane and asked how many of them were there with her.  She said three.  He asked her to reach the dhaba along with her friends and then did exactly the same what he had narrated to me a while back when were returning from the restaurant.  By the time we reached she was already there with 5 more children. 

The photo that I have inserted in the blog is the actual photo that I clicked yesterday night around 10.30PM with those young little girls feeling so happy holding Fanta cans in their hands and ensuring they don’t leave any drop unlicked.

This incidence obviously made me speechless but also taught me one lesson that ‘Action Speak Louder Than Words”.  I realized we had been thinking of doing something good for the society for a long time and had been talking about it with our friends, but then never did anything concrete about it.  And, on the other hand there’s this guy who had been doing such great acts of humanity for a long time and had never ever mentioned before.  This made me feel and look weak.  I had been suggesting people and students about how procrastination destroys a human being, but then on this aspect I was myself procrastinating and not doing anything other than just talking.

What this incidence also taught me was the belief that Nike uses as its tagline - ‘Just Do It’.  In our lives we aspire for some great things, things that we want to do badly but in the hustle bustle of the daily routine we tend to forget so many of them.  Some day, just sit down, relax for sometime and think if you ever wanted to do something in your life that you have perhaps forgotten.  Try and remember those aspirations or goals of your life that could have been as small as flying a kite, visiting your old aunt or uncle’s place whom you have not visited for ages, drawing a picture of your parents or friends, or simply playing ludo with your family.  You may also have had grand plans for yourself like buying a big house, buying a luxury car, getting a job with your dream company, visiting your favourite vacation destination, starting a charity foundation, learn how to start writing your own blog or one day even write a book. 

We all have aspirations and dreams we truly desire to achieve.  But if we don’t do anything concrete to achieve them, you would end up being the way it happened with me - not doing anything on my desire to help women sanitation.

To avoid getting into a trap, what I suggest to each one of you is write down your dreams and goals you want to achieve.  Unless you write them down on a piece of paper, you will not be able to remember them and eventually, forget them.  So here are some tips on how you should write your goals and then make a routine and create a path to achieving them:

1.             Write 100 goals of your life

Make a list of 100 goals that you would want to accomplish in your lifetime.  These can be anything that you aspire to do and something that you feel, if accomplished would make your life worthwhile. 

I have started preparing my list 100 goals and till now have reached 54 goals.  I still need to add 46 more.  At some point of time in future, I might share with all of you my goals J

2.             Make a Goals Diary

In order to write your goals nicely, I suggest you take a separate diary and then on each page write down one goal.  To make it look real, try and put some pictures and write some sentences about it so that when you read it again and again, your subconscious mind starts to make it happen for you.  The diary can be a scrapbook - something like what Ranbeer Kapoor had in the movie ‘Ye Jawani Hai Deewani’ or it can be a simple diary with enough pages to put pictures and illustrations.

3.             Have at least one goal that pushes you to your limits

Amongst the list of 100 goals you should have at least one goal (you obviously can have more) that if achieved would make you feel like a ‘rockstar’.  That goal should energize you, should be a good enough reason for you to wake you up every morning and if achieved, would completely turn around your life.  It can be something like buying a luxury car or writing a book or doing scuba diving or becoming CEO of a company etc. 

This goal would keep you on your toes, would keep you extremely focused and let you take the path that few people take in their lives.  This is the goal that would make your life worth it.

4.             Have a definite time period attached to your goals

There’s no point writing your dreams if you don’t know by when to achieve them.  In order to make your subconscious mind work in tandem with your desires, it is important to have a definite time period by which you would achieve your goals.  I suggest that against each goal write down the time and the date by which you would achieve that goal.  For example – instead of writing that I will loose 10 kgs weight, write down that I shall weigh 75 kgs by 31^st March 2015.  By doing this you are sending highly focused signals to your brain

5.             Re-read your goals

Make it a habit to read your goals at least twice, once in the morning when you wake up and once at the night before you go to sleep.  As per some proven scientific techniques, if you, before sleeping read something that feeds your mind an aspiration and whilst you are about to sleep, you start to believe that your aspiration is getting fulfilled, the subconscious mind takes it very seriously and makes it happen for you without fail.  This is because when you are sleeping, your subconscious mind is not getting any negative signals and consequently, the feeling of you having achieved your dream gets fixed in your subconscious mind. 

I have tried this myself and it surely works. 

6.             Believe in yourself completely

Whatever be the situation, you have to believe in yourself and feed your mind that “YOU WILL DO IT”.  Trust me, if you develop this habit then sooner or later you would surely be the “Winner”.

I hope this article helps you take some informed choices.  I wish you all green lights in your life…

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Authored by Nimish Goel (www.nimishgoel.com), a qualified chartered accountant who’s passion is to coach young chartered accountants and aspiring students achieve the best in their life.  Nimish used to work with EY and PwC in India and has also worked with KPMG in Europe.  He now runs his own consulting company and runs a blog www.nimishgoel.com.  He can be reached for any queries and issues on his blog.  

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