Designing a Future

A not so desperate housewife tells me, "I want to change. I don't like being changed." The thirty something mother of three wants to break free from the domestic rut. Yet, she doesn't want to take up a soft teaching job that her husband recommends. She wants to grow and export orchids.

"I want to go out there and make a difference, but I am afraid of the unknown,"she says with a heavy breath. Honestly, I tell her, "How can you be afraid of the unknown when you do not know what that is? You can only be afraid of something you know, isn't it?" Then looking at her puzzled eyes and a mop of hair hanging on her cheek like a delicate creeper, I say, "What you are afraid of is really giving up the security of the known." We are scared to give up control of what we have. We cling like leeches to our past experiences. We are really afraid of getting unstuck from our past.

So how does one change? she asks. Not by going back to the past but by designing the future, I tell her. You can design the future only when you stop repeating the past. Look here, I insist, your brain has a billion neurons that can combine in trillions of new neural circuits. Your attachment to the past is locked in only 5 per cent of your entire neural network. Just use the rest 95 per cent of your brain to dream up a future full of orchids. Dream of blooming flowers and smiling customers. You will then design a dream future. She smiles nervously. I didn't know what that smile she gave means. But I know for sure, I have set her thinking about her future.

Dr Debasish Chatterjee The author is a Professor at IIM, Lucknow. He can be reached at successsutras@indiatimes.com