Once a young soldier went in search of wisdom, he happened to pass a village where he came across a master who was considered to be the wisest man alive. He was very skeptical as the master was very weak and fragile and could barely walk. The soldier in his hoarse voice, standing proudly in front of the master said, “After hearing a lot about you I have come here to ask you the difference between Hell and Heaven.” The master took his own time to look up and with a smile on his face replied, “Look at you. Your clothes are shabby, your sword is tarnished, your shoes are tattered, your cap is dirty, and you are a shame to all soldiers. How can I teach you anything?” The soldier turned red with anger at the insults. Immediately he took out his rusty sword and in all his rage, he kept it over the master’s head. The master in his soft voice said, “This is Hell.” The soldier, ashamed and embarrassed, was overwhelmed. Filled with humility, in no time he bowed down to apologize. The master smiled and said, “This is Heaven.”
I would love to share the greatest learning of my life that can be best expressed as, “A needle alone can prick and pierce, sometimes drawing blood. When the thread joins the needle, it can mend, bind together, join stronger. Similarly, when the sharp needle of our mind i.e. anger is controlled by the forgiveness from the heart, the relationships become warm and human.”
Every individual have aself-image andself-ideal. Self-image is what a person is in present and self-ideal is what a person wants himself to become.
I would like to explain this by taking an example of an ordinary human being who has certain desires. Now, I would point out what he is now and what he wants from life.
Self-Image
1.Working in SBI Life
2.Owns Maruti 800
3.SalaryRs. 6 lac per annum
4.Flat in New Delhi
5.Nokia N72
6.Titan Watch
Self-Ideal
1.Working in World Bank
2.Owns Porsche Carrera GT
3.Salary Rs. 1 Cr. per annum
4.Owns a Row house
5.Vertu
6.Louis Vuittonand the list goes on…
The following figure depicts the relationship between self-image, self-ideal, and self-esteem.
Unarguably, everybody will have a self-image and a self-ideal. How a person can close that gap between them. How an individual can achieve success and how other cannot? What is different in Ambani,Gates, Obama, Tata and the likes of them? They were also common people. They also had a goal in life and most important, they had a self-ideal too. How did they achieve the enormous amount of success? They did nothing magical. Even God was also unbiased towards them. The only thing they have in common was a “HIGH SELF ESTEEM”.
The figure above depicts,the higher the self-esteem, the more near you are towards your goal and thus, justifying their success.
There is a deep relationship between respect for self and respect for others. There are four aspects for it.
Aspect 1: High respect for self, low respect for others
Peopleunder this category are aggressive. They are egotist (do not confuse with egoist). They are boastful of themselves. They think that no one is better than they are and in the process, theydo not bother to care for small things. Trust me, they can never be trusted for big things.
Aspect 2:Low respect for self, low respect for others
People under this category are abdicating. They dethrone themselves with the power they can enjoy. They believe that the world is not a place to live in. They waste all their life cribbing about every little thing. They neither are happy with others nor with themselves. Lack of motivation,mainly intrinsic, is what they are suffering from.
Aspect 3:Low respect for self, high respect for others
People under this category are submissive. They lack in confidence. They get fascinated with the simplest of the works of others. They think that they are good for nothing and keep searching an ideal in every person they came across. One of the adjective that defines them is ‘Gullible’.
Aspect 4:High respect for self, high respect for others
People under this category are assertive. They achieve everything in life. Success touches their feet in whatever they do, wherever they go. Unarguably, they are blessed with the ‘Midas Touch’ not because they are born lucky but because they got the basics right. They love themselves and love others. They do not have a fear of failure; rather they are willing to accept their failures. They are not ashamed of admitting their mistakes in public. They do not care what people say. They never discuss people but ideas and that is the key to success.
Now, you are the best judge. You yourself decide that you fall under which category and in which category you want to lie in.ZigZiglar famously said, “Put all excuses aside and remember this: YOU are capable.”
It was Diwali vacation. I was travelling in the train to see one of my relatives. Suddenly, my phone rang.
"Hi Pranav, I want some advice regarding MBA. I mean, which forms should I fill? I am appearing for CAT this November."
I replied spontaneously, "How much you are expecting? As in, how much are you scoring in your mock CAT's?"
"Around 90%ile”, he said.
Then suddenly those words brought me into my past because I saw him at the same platform where I was a year ago.
Then I thought, do I have the same advice for everyone? Obviously, the answer was ‘No’.
I remembered the most important lesson while I was filling forms last year. Before entering the B-school, I spent around Rs. 30,000 on forms just because I didn't want to leave any scope of a drop out. To avoid every possible risk, I filled all the forms ranging from 85%ile to 95%ile. This was just because I knew I was a mediocre and my Dad has a lot of money.
The lesson I learnt here was that how even a reputed B-school earns money by selling forms (even before student takes admission) to students irrespective of the low family income. The poor students have to manage it. After all, doing MBA is of utmost importance.
I basically belong to Kanpur. Not every B-school has the interview center at Kanpur. So, I had to travel throughout India to go through interview process for a much needed admission.
Then a thought brought smile on my face. The thought was about my travelling schedule which was:-
15th February - MH-CET in Delhi.
17th February - IMT in Indore.
20th February - IBS and XIME in Hyderabad (got XIME rescheduled due to clash in dates).
22nd February - MICA in Delhi.
28th February - ISBM in Delhi.
1st March - LBSIM in Delhi & XIME (rescheduled) in Bangalore (skipped XIME due to clash again, wasted 800 bucks)
2nd March - SDMIMD in Delhi.
3rd March - Kirloskar (KIMS) in Lucknow.
5th March - FORE in Delhi.
18th March - BIM in Chennai.
23rd March - IIPS in Gandhinagar.
24th March - KJ Somaiya in Delhi.
26th March - NIBM in Delhi.
18th April - UBS in Chandigarh.
18th June - Counseling of UBS in Chandigarh.
Nearly I attended all the interviews. Thanks to the train and flight connectivity system and my rich dad who paid all that money (ticket and the hotel rent as I do not have relatives at every city I visited) just to make sure I get into a B-school of my choice.
I converted a few of the B-schools I applied. Finally, I took admission in IMT for which I paid Rs. 7.96 lac. Thanks again to my rich dad.
Now after all these thoughts I wondered what kind of advice should I offer to him; I knew about his family which will not be able to afford all this expenditure.
There are many such mediocre candidates who with their hard work manage to get a decent college and hope of better future. Their dreams get shattered to hear the fee structure of the colleges. Even the likes of IIM's and MDI charge a fee of above Rs. 10 Lac. Do such hard working students have no right to study in good B-schools?
Now you yourself decide, is MBA only for the riches?
The only solution that came into my mind is to open up more government institutes which should join the league of FMS Delhi and UBS Chandigarh (to name a few). They have a fee structure which nearly every individual can afford. Also, each state should be allotted with more than three interview centers to make travel easy and affordable to economically lower class students.
At last I want to quote that, “Money and a little hard work can’t buy Intelligence but surely an MBA degree.”
