Those who know me well have an idea that I am a keen sports follower. I am very passionate about my cricket and football. Today I was telling a friend of mine that this weekend has been an absolute disaster for me. First Pakistan cricket team lost to the injury hampered underdog Newzeland side and then to complete the disaster for me Liverpool football club of which I am a die hard fan lost to Chelsea; one of the two football teams I love to hate (the other one being Manchester united). Although for a supporter his teams win or loss is something that totally falls in the circle of concern and he has no influence over it, but still those who know what it means to passionately follow a sports team would also know how badly it affects the moods and feelings of the supporters when there team loses.
Till today I was very reactive to both the defeats, but today when I opened one of my favorite and most regularly visited websites the cricinfo.com I came across a proactive Younis Khan statement. He thinks that it was his drop catch that resulted in Pakistan’s defeat against Newzeland and though he will remember the incident forever, he is completely unfazed by it and will continue to enjoy his captaincy.
This positive statement improved my mood to a large extent and I am happy for Younis Khan who unlike his predecessors has shown proactive attitude by accepting his mistake and not letting it overwhelm him. I think his proactivity is a good reply to my reactivity and it has uplifted my spirits to a large extent.
It was Friday and for a change I decided to make the weekend a wee bit longer by cutting short my stay at FCC campus in pursuit of a lost cause, i.e, An accidental encounter with a pretty face. As I started my car I was excitedly day dreaming about the prospects of a rare occurrence when I was going to be the king of my house as my parents had left for Islamabad to attend the marriage of a cousin, my brother exclaimed; "Bhai why the hell is this car leaning towards one side? Oh damn it the tire looks flat!"
This statement not only destroyed all the fun, but also brought me back to reality. I threw a look of disgust at my brother hoping against hope that he was wrong. When the car gingerly moved a few more yards and I realized that he was right I tried to pretend that I already knew the fact that the tire was puncture and he didn't need to reveal it.
Now that the car was punctured I had two options. One was the easy way out to forcedly take the unwilling car to the petrol pump on three working tires, where someone would change the tire for me and the second option was to attempt the un-attempted or as the Mountain Dew ad would put it "do the dew!," which in this case was that I change the tire myself for the first time in my life.
Huh-ho! God bless Mr. Mannan Amin our new Market Research instructor, just a couple of days back he had made us read the first chapter of Stephen Covey's book, "The 7 habits of highly effective men." Guess what? The first chapter is all about "pro-activity" and in this chapter Mr. Covey states, "Proactivity is part of human nature, and, although the proactive muscles may be dormant, they are there."
Tell u what; had I not read the book so carefully and not especially underlined this particular set of above mentioned words I would have found myself a very easy way out of my uninvited and unwelcomed situation by telling myself, "change a tire and that too in this heat, well you just can’t do it. Take the car to the nearby petrol pump."
But now I had a job at hand and the job was to prove Mr. Stephen Covey right that everyone, including me has proactive muscles. Aaah come on now, the man can not be wrong. He has sold 15 million copies of this book.
Well I took the initiative and for a change a positive one too. I called my friend Kashif for my help about whom I knew that he had changed a flat tire once. Both of us with some trial and error managed to succeed in changing the tire with my brother hovering over our heads with his made to look useful advices.
After changing the tire, all drained with sweat and stained with a mixture of mud and grease, we decided it was time for the best part, "Nirala's Rubrri Milk"; some much needed refreshment.
Now I can safely state, with a bit of effort and at the expense of a little sweat, mud and grease we can not only practice proactivity at some level in our daily life that can lead to new learning experiences and strong character building, but we can also testify the Surf Exel tag line "dagh to achay hotay hein!"
