The one regret I have

From as long as I can remember I had always been on top of the class, always the geek and always the teachers pet. I always ranked 1^st or 2^nd in class, and thought that was my unchanging reality, until one day it all changed. I changed my 7^th school in 9^th standard, but this time something more than just the school changed, my reality changed.

From being the centre of all attention I became invisible to everyone in my new school. I was struggling in my new environment – new classmates, new teachers and a new format of examination and instructions. In the midst of all this came the first unit test result – disappointing to say the least. I felt like someone had pushed me off a plane with no parachute and no safety harnesses, like I was free falling in the middle of no where, gripped in fear and pain, not knowing what had happened or what would happen.

It was just the start of the domino effect of one failure, one disappointment in my life.

From being the girl on the first bench with her hand perpetually raised I became a notorious backbencher, constantly looking for a corner to hide myself in. From being the envy of all others I became envious of just everyone around me. I wished I could be like the one’s with the great scores, like the ones with the great hair and skin, like the one’s who spoke well or the ones who read a lot and vain as it may sound and as embarrassing as it is to accept but I would have been happy to even just have been the one with a handsome boyfriend.

The ripple effect of my one failure could be seen in my life for years to come. I had lost all my self confidence, it felt like someone had scooped out every ounce of it from me leaving me hollow. One small disappointment, over the years, snowballed into such a big problem that I started underestimating myself and started making peace with just being average.

Sometimes you need a big jolt in life to actually see reality. My jolt came when I gave CAT (along with my final year engineering exams) and scored just a 50 percentile.

I was shocked and broken but this time I tried a different approach, I said to myself “that’s it, I am better than this and I am going to prove it to myself.” I gave CAT again and this time I scored a 96 percentile. However, I still feel that if I had not stopped believing in myself, I could have studied at the IIM’s or even Wharton.

I am writing this for my young friends – Aditi, Neel, Mihir, Vedant, Purva, Meeti, Anvi, Rutav, Manan,Smit, Simran, Niraj, Milli, Avni, Juhi and Rahul. I am writing this because I want you to know that there is no life without failures, infact the most successful people have all had to deal with tragedies and failures of unfathomable proportions. True victors are those who can rise up stronger after every fall. True victors are those who use failure as a stepping stone to success.

My biggest and only regret in life is that I let failure get the better of me and that stopped me from doing justice to my potential. I hope you will not make the same mistake as me, I hope you will live a life free of regrets.

True victory is not “always winning”, true victory is “never losing”.