There lies a favourite story in the Old Testament, part of the fundamental fabric of the
Judeo-Christian tradition. It’s the story of Joseph, who was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers at the age of 17. Can you imagine how easy it would have been for him to languish in self-pity as a servant of Potiphar, to focus on the weaknesses of his brothers and his captors and on all he didn’t have?
But Joseph was proactive. He worked on be. And within a short period of time, he was running Potiphar’s household. He was in charge of all that Potiphar had because the trust was so high.
Then the day came when Joseph was caught in a difficult situation and refused to compromise his integrity. As a result, he was unjustly imprisoned for 13 years. But again he was proactive. He worked on the inner circle, on being instead of having, and soon he was running the prison and eventually the entire nation of Egypt, second only to the Pharaoh.
This idea is a dramatic Paradigm Shift for many people. It is so much easier to blame other
people, conditioning, or conditions for our own stagnant situation. But we are responsible —
“response-able” — to control our lives and to powerfully influence our circumstances by working on be, on what we are.
There will be some type of aspirants who keep on counting their curses. They say, “we don’t have Group A parents to mentor me, I have started the preparation very late, I am from a rural background and my English is very poor, I don’t have enough financial backup to give 6 attempts without having to worry about the money, so on and so forth”. It’s ok to comfort ourselves with convenient truths. But if we make that a habit of our thought process, we will start excusing ourselves for our laziness, for our poor efforts and for our low commitment level. Then we will fall into the vicious cycle of frustration.
Hence, every day, try to count your blessings. See the brighter side of your present life. Think that you are living the life of someone else’s dream. When you feel you are blessed enough, you won’t hold yourself from putting 100 fold efforts. You will try to grow from where you are. Like a lotus, you will come out from the dirt and start yearning for the sun rays without being disturbed by your prevailing crisis situation.
