'With a heavy heart, but with a firm resolve, I said Yes!'

The Real Secret Behind the Australian World Cup Win!

A Difficult Decision | Pat Cummins

21 November 2000 ❤️

#memoriesfromdiaries #inspirational

In the first week of November 2000, I had made a difficult decision!

To stop reading magazines and comics and to completely stop watching TV, until the time I cleared my UGC-NET/JRF!

My personal diary entry dated 21st November 2000

It was such a difficult decision you see!

Since magazines, comics and TV were the only modes of entertainment for us back then! 😊

Dad, who was Professor in Government service, had already told me about how UGC-NET has been made mandatory for teaching in Colleges/Universities across India, and clearing NET requires a lot of dedication and commitment, he had so lovingly advised me!

Now, I had to take a call! I had to take a resolve!

I was doing my MA in English at that point of time. So I resolved to take the difficult decision of requesting dad to sell off our Television, until I cleared my NET/JRF!

Back then, one of my major visual distractions was the TV, you see! 

And well, Dad was quite happy with my decision and in fact he was highly supportive and appreciative of it as well.

It so happened, that, even while I was excitedly watching the Test series on TV, Francis, [our family friend] rang me up to convey the news that, he’d got a person who was interested in purchasing our TV.

And with a heavy heart, but with a firm resolve, I said YES! 

That’s how we dispensed with our TV Set for Rs. 2000/- in November 2000!

Well, to be honest, it was one of the most difficult decisions of my life! 

But the next one year saw me highly focussed in my studies. I had a kinda NET war room, which had books of all hues for my NET preparation.

And exactly a year later, in December 2001, I was rewarded! 

Yes! I had cleared my NET in my very first attempt!

And in a few months from then, I got into my dream vocation - Teaching in College!

Well, initially, I thought this diary entry jotted down exactly 23 years ago, on this self-same November, ain’t gonna prove to be of much value today. So I didn’t want to make a post out of it.

But then, the inspiration for this post, is a past tweet by Australian Men’s Cricket Team Captain Pat Cummins, that he had made exactly a year ago, on 15th November 2022, in which he states that - 

he had made a difficult decision in November 2022.

Pat's Tweet on 15th November 2022

The decision to miss next year’s (2023 season) IPL, since his focus from henceforth was on the Ashes Series and the World Cup!

And in an interview quite soon after, he had also defined the year ahead - 2023 - as a ‘career-defining’ year for him and his players!

Fast forward to exactly a year later – November 2023 – Pat is now basking in the glory of having won a World Test championship, a successful Ashes series in the UK and now an awesome ODI World Cup triumph against hot-favourites India!

‘You don’t want to look back at the end of your cricket career to think you didn’t give it your best crack,’ he had observed, last year. 

What a beautiful line, ain’t it?

Yes! Giving it your best crack, requires a few difficult decisions on our part.

The decisions might seem difficult now! But the rewards will be immense in exactly a year from now!

James Clear, author of the inspirational Atomic Habits, says –

It doesn’t matter how successful or unsuccessful you are right now. What matters is whether your habits are putting you on the path toward success.

How true!

Like Pat Cummins, whose difficult decision was rewarded three-fold, I’m sure your difficult decision will fetch you three-fold returns, in exactly a year from now!

You bet!

PS: You may want to read more on James Clear’s motivational read titled, Atomic Habits in our past post HERE.

Screenshot: cricket.com.au