Disturb the Disturbance!
Long weekends sometimes come wrapped up with zillion seconds of ideal time and people like me have found out just the right way for optimum utilization of this time. Scrolling through Facebook feed (:’o), sorry, if you were eagerly looking for some creative answers here. :p
So, it was just another one of those weekends and like always I was on my phone pretending to be busy. It was then, that I stumbled upon an article called, “The cockroach theory of Sunder Pichai”. A sudden love-hate feeling was instigated in me for the title as I have a deep internal hatred for crawling roaches but then I also love Sunder Pichai for his work. Hence, with a surge of curiosity, enthusiasm and nervousness I opened the article.
Link to the article: http://www.mensxp.com/technology/latest/27319-heres-sundar-pichais-cockroach-theory-that-will-teach-you-a-thing-or-two-about-life.html
I will share the important message conveyed in the article and will then also try and articulate my own views of the same. In short, the article mentions that it is our inability to handle the disturbance created by problems in our life that actually disturbs us and not the actual problem. If we keep calm and try to find a way to tackle the problem, we can do so without getting worked up or disturbed. He explains all this with the help of a cockroach that disturbs an entire group in a restaurant, but the waiter, who calmly picks up the roach and throws it out.
More than the problem, it’s my reaction to those problems that creates chaos in my life.
Having read this statement over and over again, I could not help but relate it to my day-to-day life. How many times have I felt miserable just because I failed to calmly understand the problem and accept the situation, what I end up doing is getting angry and frustrated just because things are not going the way I planned them. We all try to take charge of our own lives but there are ’n’ numbers of external factors that we can’t control and these factors sometimes create road blocks in our path to success and it’s our reaction or I should say response to these road blocks that defines how far we go in life.
Don’t react, but respond
A reaction by definition is: Something which is done impulsively to a change.
A simple example of a reaction can be, when you get angry, when someone breaks your favorite vase. But reaction creates problems and chaos, just like it did in the case of the cockroach and the group story. The group of people reacted to the situation, which can be based on their previous encounter with the cockroach. The reaction disturbed them and the people around, but the waiter who calmly understood the behavior of the roach and then took a counter measure to carefully pick it up and throw it out. The waiter didn’t react but responded to the situation and handled it to near perfection. Response is always a well thought action, which normally has justification behind it.
Problems develop us, hard times shape us and when we go through them to come out victorious we get the satisfaction we crave throughout our life. I have made myself a promise to smile through tough times and take them as learning opportunities, to come out as a better and a stronger me.
Find opportunity in every obstacle
How many of you would join hands and pledge the same. I would love to hear your story or your take on problems and how to handle them, till them keep reading and always remember:
Disturb the Disturbance, not yourself. Cheers!
