So I watched ‘Bend it like Beckham ‘ a night ago, and so many thoughts came flashing through. My story starts with the fact that I am an Indian too, who holds great passion for fitness and used to find it tough to play unlike the boys, as I was growing up. Fast forward to today and things are so so different where I am now studying fitness after 15 years of no education time and have my family’s full support. What changed? Their faith towards my passion. What worked? My faith in what I love doing the most and that’s running and fitness training. Why didn’t I do this before? You know when the time is right and when you take that first step, the world transpires to make sure you reach your goal. What lies in between is the hard work as someone has to do that too.. and that someone is YOU!
Ask yourself this now, what makes you happy? What’s on your list that would really add meaning to your life? Define that and then break it down to what you need to do to reach there. I was watching a you tube video today as a part of my course is to prepare a business plan, and one of the things or points I really got attracted to was when the guy said. .. see what you are lacking in terms of education, what is stopping from reaching where you want to be, note it and work towards ticking it off your list. And once you do, remember never stop educating yourself, everyday learn something, read a book, watch some video, talk to people, through social media or even explore history. Make sure everyday you are better than yesterday, this is not what the guy said; this is what I want to share. Lot of us dream to be somewhere at some stage in our lives but we only dream, we never get up to make it happen. While watching the movie, I couldn’t help but think what would have happened if Jassi’s parents did let her play football and not teach her how to make aalo gobi? Nothing really, as it is a movie that had to have a happy ending after a lifetime of twists. Then why can’t we have a happy ending with lesser twists? Why do we just dream and do nothing to make it happen? I understand we have social limitations, family, cultural differences etc but isn’t this the one opportunity we get in our lives, to change our future? My idea is not to take you out of your comfort zone and do something incredibly out of the box, my aim is to encourage you take one step at a time towards your dream, to realise that whatever you are dreaming right now. .. is possible.
If someone told me 5 years ago (well 6 now) that I would run a marathon, I would have said ‘no way’ as I hated running in school. I enjoyed sports but not running. I played basketball and cricket with boys in their teams, but not running. I played badminton in my colony and enjoyed biking to places, but not running. And today, I have competed 10 marathons, 3 within this year including 2 in less than a week. I have signed up for my next one already, scheduled for November and have an idea about where all I want to run next year. How am I doing this? By putting my thoughts in front of me, so they can be my goals and achievements in life. What about the others? What about them? Those who hold great value in your life and you in theirs, will support you if they know what your passion means to you and how it will only brighten your life. It could be anything, from painting the walls to learning how to dance to even teaching someone Zumba. Whatever it is, this is the time, this is the moment and this is the only chance you can get to make a better tomorrow, to make your soul happy. And if you are stuck like Jassi, then you need an angel like the people around her to make her belief how good she is in what she does and that she too can go places in her life by living the passion she holds. Everything else, will fall into place and if it doesn’t then at least you tried. At no stage then you can say the famous words… ‘I wish’.