The Power to Instill
Having hopefully read the "About" page, you have all understood that there is a transformative power to captivate an audience through a journey. Today, I will be recounting the beginning of my own personal journey back in high school that has drastically changed the course of my life for the better.
Back in high school, I was one of many students near the top of the class who only knew one thing: you were a composition of your results. With such a mentality, I devoted my very being to ensure that I achieved the best results during my high school years. It wasn't until the second semester of my sophomore year that I got "slapped in the face" by life.
Second semester of my sophomore year turned out to be a difficult period. All of the responsibilities as a student in challenging honors courses while being a student athlete started to weigh down heavily on my shoulders. I started to develop severe lower back problems during my club soccer season and had a difficult schedule of classes to cope with. The one class in particular that was presenting a tough challenge was Math Analysis Honors, or as some of you might better relate to as Pre-Calculus. Up to this point in my high school career, a B had never even grazed my academic record. Math Analysis was trying ever so hard to end that streak and seemingly was winning the battle all throughout the semester. Trying to push hard to get an A, I found myself falling short. With that realization becoming more and more apparent as there were fewer and fewer days left in the semester, I went into a slight period of depression. My entire life seemed to be deteriorating at the passing of every day.
In dealing with this time in my life, I started watching a great deal of interviews of various different celebrities. I wanted to gauge what had made them so successful in reaching the position that they all currently had at the time. A similar concept to the cliché "Hard work pays off" was always threaded somewhere in each of those interviews. I had been working extremely hard but nothing was falling my way at that time in my life; I wanted to hear something different for a change! In the span of a week or two, I would never have imagined that my life would be so drastically impacted.
Searching for interviews on YouTube, I stumbled upon a few of Shahrukh Khan's and Will Smith's. I had already had an affinity for the two superstars but my admiration grew even stronger for the two after hearing some truly unique words from each of them. There is a reason why these two actors are at the top of the list in their respective countries when it comes to the film industry, and I found out exactly why.
Shahrukh Khan, also known as SRK, had instantaneously connected with me ever since I first saw Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... at a friend's house. As a little side note for those not familiar with Shahrukh Khan, he is one of, if not, the biggest movie stars in Bollywood and I highly recommend all of you to watch his movies, including KKKG! As far as my relationship with Shahrukh Khan had stood at that point in time, I was simply a fan of the characters he portrayed on-screen. Once I started to gain insight as to who he was at the core, I realized that he is likely the most relatable human being on the face of this planet when it comes to personality. Through his interviews, I learned how important it was to take who you are as a person at the core and not let that hold you back. We all have idiosyncrasies that are immutable. However, we fall into this trap of trying to change something which cannot be changed in the first place. Incredibly, Shahrukh Khan had the tremendous effect in his words in those interviews to bring about a change in the way I think about myself. From then onward, I have developed this construct known as The Dual Actor's Mentality. I won't go too much into the concept right now but essentially it is the idea that we have the ability to channel between two personalities: the first is who we are at the core and the second is who/what we wish to envision ourselves to be. This construct has allowed me to adapt myself to various different situations as I have seen fit, all while being happy with who I am at the core.
Will Smith, on the other hand, had my comedic respect ever since I first started watching his famous sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. For those of you not familiar with Will Smith, he is, similar to Shahrukh Khan, one of the top A-List actors in Hollywood. I simply enjoyed the positive energy that Will Smith was able to transfer from the television/movie screen to the audience but had no real knowledge of him outside of an acting standpoint. It is who he is off camera that really struck me. In many of his interviews, Will Smith details his life philosophy, something which is truly unlike any other. At the core, Will Smith lives life in a metaphysical, spiritual sense but grounds himself with a great deal of discipline and practicality. In simpler terms, Will Smith lives life freely but disciplined enough to maintain a fine balance in his life, which is definitely conveyed successfully in front of the camera. I had been living too disciplined and failed to realize a sense of purpose and liberty. My life had a new freshness and perspective to it once I heard Will Smith utter the very words, "If you're not making someone else's life better, then you're wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other lives better." I started to find a sense of mission and happiness in what it is that I was doing in my life. No longer did I view school as a just a way to get a good job or view playing soccer as just a way to stay physically fit and to win awards; I gained a new perspective as to how I was obtaining value through all of my activities in life in relation to how I could give back to the global community. Everything was not as harsh and clear-cut as before and there was a new flow to life that was soothing and a new sense of infectious, positive energy in my life that I wanted to share with others.
It was in those few interviews that I found a new way of living and perceiving the world. I was no longer chained down to my old ways; my new lifestyle enabled me to find everything much more meaningful. Shahrukh Khan and Will Smith were able to induce this change in myself that I will be forever grateful for. In doing so, they have helped me create my life motto: Entertain, Inspire, Motivate.
Thank you Shahrukh Khan for helping me find happiness in myself as a person. Thank you Will Smith for basically "saving my life". To conclude, I will be ending each and every post with a quote that I find most relevant to the topic of the post. It only seems fitting that I include one from both Shahrukh Khan and Will Smith for this post.
"The dreams I chased took me on a journey, a journey more rewarding than the goals." - Shahrukh Khan
"I love living, I think that's infectious, it's something that you can't fake." - Will Smith
