Get a preview of Sejal's lessons learned with the below excerpt from a portion of the book's second chapter.
Lesson 2: Blessing or a Curse? (Excerpt)
Have you ever felt like the deck was stacked against you? Like the odds were never in your favor? Like no matter how hard you tried, no matter how bad you wanted something, it would never happen for you? I used to be convinced that nothing would ever end up in my favor, from the little things to the big things. If there was an opportunity to fail, I always felt like I would. I felt I had to work ten times harder than everyone else in order to even have a fighting chance.
When I was younger, things, like being picked on someone’s team among the last for dodgeball, having the worst topic in class to do the project on, or being unprepared for a pop quiz the one day I forgot to do the homework, all seemed like the workings of a magical curse.
It felt terrible to be picked among the last for dodgeball, and I could handle that feeling if it stopped there. I could tell myself, “Oh it’s just a momentary lapse in luck.” But then I would get assigned the worst topic in class for a project. Again, I could probably convince myself, “It is just another stroke of bad luck.”
Although, it did not stop there because shortly after comes a pop quiz on the one assignment I forgot to do. What were the chances that all those bad things would happen to me in a row? It honestly felt like I would never be able to catch a break. By that point, I accredited all my “bad luck” to the mystical curse I believed I had.
Little did I know that what I thought was a curse was actually a blessing in disguise. You see, always walking around with this sort of chip on my shoulder made me a stronger person. I found that by believing that I had this curse on me that forced me to work harder and outside my comfort zone, I worked ten times harder for everything because I believed I had to. I turned my “curse” into a driving force. I used my own interpretation of a “curse” and turned it into a positive.
What it taught me was that no matter what, you always have to give 110% effort if you want to succeed. It taught me that nothing is necessarily good or bad, but it is all in the way you transform and use it. The true, inherent value of hard work is revealed when we have to prove ourselves. I have learned the difference between someone who will succeed and someone who will not, is not how many times you fall, rather it is the number of times you stand up again.
Constantly feeling like the deck was stacked against me conditioned me to always stand back up. Anyone who ever did anything on a massive scale of change was open to the idea of failure and failed...
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