How a Simple Change in Mindset Turned A Disabled Person into A High Achiever Leader

I lived with a disability every single day of my life. I experienced that all kinds of adversities, misfortunes, crises, setbacks, failures, and hardships – all tend to hold us back for an extended period of time. Whether personal, professional, financial, or medical, all of them could act as “walls of limitations”.

Within those walls, we experience some losses, which make us feel less than others. But I learned the hard way that these losses could be our “windows of opportunities”, x-factors, or differentiators over others if we leverage them correctly.

LIVING THE DISABILITY EVERY SINGLE DAY

When I was 6 months old, I contracted this planet’s deadliest disease, called polio. Most people infected with it would die. Even today, there is no cure for it. I survived somehow, but I got one leg paralyzed. I lost the ability to walk well before reaching the age to walk. I was left to carry this permanent disability for life.

The first 20 years of my life were no less than a Homosapien evolution. I evolved through crawling on the floor, lifting up my leg with my hands, wearing prosthetics, using walking canes, and finally learning to walk painfully with crutches. As I grew up, I experienced post-polio syndrome. It means my healthy organs started becoming weaker while overcompensating for the lost limb.

45 years ago, in a remote area of India, there were no educational or medical facilities. Being born in extreme poverty, there was no future for a kid like me who could merely crawl on the floor. I had a very slim chance of going to a primary school.

However, I was blessed enough to come out strong. Today, I stand as a learning and performance scientist who gets to guide people on how to speed up their success. One may wonder – how a kid who could hardly walk became someone who teaches professionals and organizations how to walk faster in what they do.

Here I would like to share how a simple perspective shift called “windows through the walls” changed my life and put me on a personal transformation and excellence journey. I learned two elementary but hugely important lessons. First, not all the walls that seem to be limiting you are real. You need to break the correct wall. Second, you don’t need to break all the walls because some have windows too.

HOW DO WE RESPOND TO HARDSHIPS OR ADVERSITIES?

It turns out that psychologically, humans respond to adversity in two distinct ways. We feel either like a victim or like a fighter.

Some of us respond to adversity like a victim. We feel limited, helpless, constrained, or prisoned in some kind of wall. We can’t do what we really want to do. Some of us tend to accept it too soon, saying that it is part of us. Some of us tend to compromise, saying nothing can be done about it. Some of us tend to complain about misfortunes asking why me.

When I reached the age to go to school, the only way possible was to wear prosthetic braces on my leg. It had many straps, steel rods, and a heavy boot at the bottom to keep my leg in place. Its weight was some 20 kg, more than my own weight at that age. I probably looked like a one-legged Autobot transformer. The only problem was I could not transform into one. This was such a unique piece of equipment that the Kansas Museum of History actually displayed it in its collection.

In those braces, I could barely take one baby step at a time. I had no way to match my pace with my classmates. So, I was teased, made fun of, bullied, and often left behind.

There were moments when I had to drag my iron-cast leg back home using the strength of my stomach muscles. That 2 km of distance from school to home I used to cover in 2 hours all alone. It felt like a lifetime. The tears in my eyes were less because of physical pain and more because of emotional pain. That cycle repeated for many years. Every time I asked – why me? The more I asked, the more unpleasant answers I got from within me. Someone inside kept on telling me that I was not as good as others.

That was the victim’s side of me.

But am I alone in this world who thinks that way? Probably not. Many of us respond to hardships in life that way. When we do so, we all drag that heavy iron cast along. We feel not being good enough. We feel left behind in this world.

Now, some of us respond to adversity like a fighter. Darwin, the evolution scientist, says we are that species who fought for survival for millions of years. That fight is in our blood. Centuries of wars have made us warriors ready to fight when we see a daunting wall ahead of us.

I thought my disability was the wall that was preventing me from being socially accepted in that circle. So, I got into fighter mode, fighting against that wall. I subjected myself secretly to the harshest physical exercises, forcefully bending my legs, and doing some self-invented physiotherapy, and things like that. Hoping someday I would get better at my disability to some extent. But the more I tried, the more my emotional and physical problems escalated to the point of breakdown.

Why did human survival spirit, grit, and willpower fail in my case?

DO WE BREAK THE CORRECT WALL?

Many of us fight back against disability, and adversities with all our determination and sometimes stubbornness. Psychologists tell us that when we are in fight mode, we overlook many factors. We sort of go blind because we get into this charged willpower mode where our pride kicks in, reinforcing self-talk like I can’t fail – I must win this war. I can’t quit – I must keep trying.

When we are in that state, we don’t even bother to see if we are indeed breaking the correct wall. We all forget an important lesson from centuries of human history and civilization. How could we win a war without knowing the opponent well enough?

I failed because I did not understand my walls well enough. Thinking my inability to walk was the culprit, I was trying to fight with the wrong wall. But my real walls were utterly unreal. Those were the self-limiting beliefs I made up in my mind. Those were the victim stories I told myself over and over again. That unless I walk like normal people, I won’t be accepted. I won’t be good enough. Anything else I do, will change nothing. Those unreal, perceived, made-up walls were the ones stopping me. I was doubly disabled – externally and internally.

When I finally realized it and broke the correct wall, I became someone with the largest friendship circle and I was often called a party maker. It was a massive transformation for someone who was socially isolated and became introverted.

Here is my first lesson.

Think about your moments. Do you have those unreal, perceived walls that hold you back and don’t let you walk forward? Those are kinds of disabilities too. Reflect on this for a moment. Do you take time to understand if your walls are real or just made up in your mind? The war inside you won’t end until you ask this question. Are you really breaking the correct wall?

IF THERE ARE WALLS, THERE ARE WINDOWS TOO

Every time I was left behind, I made a pact with myself; if I can’t walk with my legs, I would walk faster with something else. But the big question was how?

One day, I realized that my disability gave me some gifts I did not recognize earlier. I had no social interruptions. No spoiler friends. Not much mobility. Because of this, I had plenty of distraction-free time at my disposal. That was an uncommon gift any kid could ask for.

What could I do with this unique leverage?

I was glued to a chair, isolated in a room, with very little mobility. My best bet was reading books and learning from them. I immersed myself in the world of learning. I read any book I could find. I remember the first book I read was Dale Carnegie, while other kids were reading comics. Soon I mastered poetry, physics, palmistry, psychology, philosophy, and any other book I could afford to buy or borrow. Many of those books were ahead of my age.

I was hungry to learn faster. That’s how I ended up with 2 doctorates and over 100 international credentials, and some of the world’s highest certifications. After all, I found a way to walk faster than others. Several decades later, I specialize in helping people speed up their learning and performance and be faster in their lives. My lack of speed became the unique expertise that took me places.

DO WE REALLY NEED TO BREAK THE WALLS?

How many times have those motivational gurus told you – break the boundaries, break the walls, nothing can stop you? If I had followed those advices, I could have continued struggling with my walls and ended up nowhere. But I chose to see the windows among those walls. When I saw my crisis, my disability, my setbacks, and my limitations, I did not see walls. I began to spot windows – windows of opportunities, leverages, and advantages.

Once I spotted them, I leveraged everything my limitations offered to me.

I read science and engineering books ahead of my age. That’s how I became an engineer at the age of 21 even though most people ruled out the possibility due to my condition. A year later, I became a technology scientist.

Inside my room, I had great leverage to engage in daydreaming and vivid imagination. Nobody scolded me for doing that. Soon a writer inside me woke up. I wrote dramas, stories, poetry, articles, and many things while other kids were struggling to write an essay. While I could not afford to buy one book in my childhood, today, I am the author of 20 books.

While sitting on the chair, I had the same leverage as the other kids. My healthy hands. II tried arts, paintings, drawing, sketching, portraits, and other creative things while other kids were busy playing cricket. I received an international artist award for things I created back then.

In all this, my disability wall did not come my way. Perhaps in more ways, it helped me go there faster.

DO WE FOCUS ON LOCATING THE WINDOWS?

Here is my second lesson.

Do we really always have to break the walls or boundaries that are limiting us? Do we always have to go on war with those walls? Perhaps we should focus on spotting windows through those walls that could allow us to see the world beyond them. And once you change your perspective this way, you will be able to find advantages in your adversities, desirability in your disability, and leverages in your limitations.

I walk with the help of a crutch now. This cutch symbolically reminds me every moment of my life that I am not enough. But that’s okay because my loss and my disability define who I was yesterday, who I am today, and who I am going to be tomorrow. Not many disabled persons would say so, but this is the reality that if I wasn’t disabled, I would not have been who I am today.

When we experience a loss, we may feel less. That’s okay. But when we start chanting motivational slogans like “I am enough, I am enough,” we tell our mind that our glass is full. Our mind stops looking for possibilities. But when we feel our glass is half empty, we will become hungry to find windows of leverages in our misfortunes or limitations to fill it up somehow. That’s when we will create new possibilities for ourselves and new definitions of ourselves.

Think about the losses caused by your adversities, disabilities, failures, setbacks, limitations, and hardships. Give it a hard thought. How could you leverage these losses to go from being less than others to being a lesson for others?

Credits: This article is based on my speech at TEDx, you can watch the video here: