“Live your larger -than- life vision.”

It was one of those wonderful conversations with my friend that I realized this quote fully. Let me now, narrate a small part of the conversation, and then connect it to my insight.

It was a good winter evening when my friend and I were walking and sat down on a bench in the park. He suddenly asked me, “ How do you make a pencil look shorter without touching or doing anything to the pencil?” I did think for a while and then said, “ I don’t know, you tell me”. He then said, “ By keeping a longer pencil next to it”.

This particular story hit me hard. I was kind of hooked on this story. The more I thought about it, the more various inferences and logical conclusions were coming forth. Then one day I thought, what if I apply this to my life?.

That not only opened a Pandora’s box, but it also had me thinking.

Then this realization hit me. When we have an issue or a problem, our entire system responds. Later on, when we have a bigger problem or issue to face, the previous problem somehow and naturally takes a back seat.

I then realized that if in life I had something which I yearned for, which is bigger than my life itself, then every other thing would look, feel smaller. However, it never took away the necessity to focus and resolve issues. Rather, it did remove the emotional attachment to those issues, thereby a higher level of clarity emerged, which directly impacted the decision making.

This is one of the greatest learnings of my life.

Chetlur S Prasad

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