My six year old’s halloween creation. While the picture took her father’s breath away, she herself didn’t seek appreciation and has in fact even forgotten about it the next morning while the father is still posting about it on FB

Is your sense of achievement driving you? Watch out if you intend to continue achieving. A sense of achievement may not be so conducive to keep doing what you are good at. What if the very skill that makes you so good at something  deserts you? How will you deal with that?

For the last couple of years I have prided myself on my fitness. I have lost weight, become stronger and generally relished the feeling of fitting better in my clothes. That fuelled a sense of wellness which continued to spur me on. All the likes and comments on my push-up challenges or my running pursuits drove me on.

For the last couple of months I haven’t been able to exercise as much. My physical ability has deserted me due to injury and other mishaps.

In August I fell sick for a week. Nothing more than the common flu. But on one of those mornings I woke up with a pain in the sole of my right foot. I dismissed it as nothing more than a minor passing injury. I even changed my footwear and ran a half marathon. But at the end of the half marathon I put my foot down in the field wrongly and twisted my ankle. By the time I was done with the ankle pain, the foot pain was still there. Nothing turned up in the check-ups (MRI/X-Ray) and the orthopaedic surgeon eventually suggested a cortisone injection in my underfoot. That meant I could barely walk for a few days. When the pain of the injection started subsiding and the original foot pain also seemed to be receding, I accidentally hit the  knee of my other leg on a centre table. Now I am hobbling due to the other leg. The long and short of it is that I have been unable to exercise as regularly as I did or boasted about.

That has got me thinking that if our sense of well-being is going to be associated with what we do well and consistently, we are going to either over do it or be disappointed. In fact, I prided myself on being holistic in my preparation for running. But moderation goes out of the window, when we start thriving in the sense of achievement. And that probably was the genesis of the pain in my foot.

As children, we just enjoy doing and do not hang on to how well we do something. It is something that adults constantly impress upon children’s minds creating this unwanted craving for success in their minds. My 6 year old has created this halloween drawing which took my breath away. But she didn’t even think she needed to seek appreciation from me. Being free from such attachment of success, she is free to create something that is likely to be very different from the above picture, that might in the eyes of the world be better or worse. But she is going to be better for it.

I have seen Sri Sri Ravi Shankar over the years meeting thousands of people everyday, giving everyone around him attention and dealing with an unimaginable list of activities. Not once have I heard him speak of his own achievements. In the process he seems to not stop achieving. Not being stuck in what we do well seems to be the pre-requisite for both consistency and creativity.

And our abilities are going to change along the way. Being free from the attachment to what one is good at allows us to keep going, while keeping the body and mind healthy for the long term.

I promise to avoid looking at the likes and positive comments I am sure to get for this wonderful post yours truly has created ;-). And you won’t hear about the wonderful half marathon I do in December despite all my personal challenges in the run up to the event.