Remember back in the day when we had the courage to dream to be anything; astronaut, pilot, doctor etc you name it. But majority of us grew up to do something else, in most cases completely opposite of what we wanted to do. Like for instance I always wanted to be a fighter pilot but too much TV tempered my eye sight and I failed long before I could apply for the job. But as human nature demands the temptation to watch dreams didn’t end there, in fact it’s quite unhealthy not to watch dreams, or aim for something that appears difficult but one endeavors to get. But have you ever wondered what makes any goal possible or otherwise. Is it hard work? Or the inborn but unique talent every individual holds within itself. Even if there was a perfect recipe to achieve the impossible, what are the chances that we still succeed?

All my questions were addressed in a Strategic Time Management session I took few months back, the focal point of the session revolved around the fact: “If you fail to plan, you are definitely planning to fail”. But we all make plans, don’t we? Weight Loss plans, quit smoking plans, be more productive plans but how many of us are actually able to cross out the check list at the end of every tenure? Now you can blame luck, circumstances or KESC for being the big obstacle in your way but deep down inside we all are aware that it’s not them but oneself. In fact, the pony within ourselves.

Now hold on a second, pony who? No it’s not a baby horse or a bunch of hairs tied to late MJ’s head (referring to a pony tail :P) but it’s a quality, an attribute, a characteristic which we have nurtured throughout our lives. It can be referred as a bug, a major impulse that tells us ‘You can’t do it’.

Let me narrate a metaphor to explain this term. In an anonymous village far far away, a disease erupted, the villagers went to the WISE ONE (the oldest guy in town with the longest beard) with their query. The WISE ONE after some basic investigation found out that there is a dead dog (TONY) in the water well which is causing the trouble and making the water poisonous. The WISE ONE advised the villagers to take out 20 buckets’ of water from the well and their problem will be solved. The villagers to WISE ONE’s surprise returned with the same problem after a week. The WISE ONE this time advised the villagers to double the number of buckets (ie 40 buckets this time) that needed to be thrown out of the well. But no visible improvement was observed after two weeks. This made the WISE ONE very curious and he inquired the villagers whether they took out the dead dog out of the well before throwing out water buckets. Turns out, the WISE ONE’s suspicion was correct, as the dead dog was not removed from the well in the first place.

This brings us to the conclusion that though we are making huge plans but when it comes to execution we are not working wisely to execute our plans. And it will remain that way unless we do anything to remove the pony out of our system? If we stop and analyze, we will be shocked to know that behind our every bad and old habit there is  a pony: sleeping like a dead dog, infecting our every effort and ruining everything that we plan to achieve. Just to share a little secret I was suppose to submit this article a month ago but I am completing this after 1 month and two weeks of planning and promising. Every week I used to promise the editor and myself to write this post but the pony within me stopped me from writing. But guess what as I will complete this sentence I will remove at least one pony from my system, what about you?