We stood on either end of a bed of broken glass that glinted menacingly in the morning light. Motivational guru Priya Kumar tossed back her blonde tresses, kicked off her stylish high heels, looked me in the eye and said, “This is it. This is how you do it.” And then as casually as one strolls in the garden, she put one foot on the bed of glass, then another and then a third and waltzed over to my side. “Your turn,’’ she smiled as Jeet, her associate, brushed off some of the tiny fragments sticking to her soles.
Well, I had travelled from Pune to Mumbai lured by the promise of learning to walk on broken glass—one of the many strategies that Priya uses to turn dispirited employees of big corporate houses into go-getters. But this command threw me off balance. My turn? But how? “Just how I did it,’’ she replied. But…but where’s the trick, I spluttered suddenly not feeling half as plucky as I had in her office an hour ago. “There is no trick, my dear. You just have to trust yourself and your natural instinct. This is just what walking on glass teaches you. Go on.”
I didn’t like this at all. Priya wasn’t telling me all. There must be some trick—-coating my soles with some protective ointment or perhaps hypnosis? “Look what is the worst that can happen? At the most you will cut your foot. It will be a one-inch deep cut that will require two stitches. You won’t be able to walk for a week. That’s it. You won’t die!” she said. And this from an ace motivational speaker.
Yet, an hour ago at her office down below everything had sounded so easy. “The world is made up of four elements. Air, water, earth and fire. Water can be contaminated, air is contaminated and earth too is polluted. But fire is always pure and it always purifies. Glass is made of this fire—hence it too purifies,’’ Priya had started off as soon as I was seated in her cosy office. “How do we know that glass cuts? We know it either through personal experience or through the experience of others. We also know it through hearsay which we tend to believe more than anything else. There are two kinds of people in this world—those to whom things happen which is 95 per cent of the population and those who make things happen—which is the remaining five per cent. The Ambanis and Birlas belong to the latter category. But for the rest—it’s always that we are the effect, the others the cause. Walking on glass makes this transformation from being an effect to a cause in three seconds. It teaches you that glass can cut and can also be cool. And it’s your decision how to make it work for you. How to change the equation of your life by taking control and using your awareness to turn things around.”
It made sense. Then. Right now, on the terrace the only thing I wanted to turn around was my decision to come here. But Priya was unrelenting. “Remember I told you there are two steps to this –the first is the difficult one which is to remove your shoes. The second is the easy part—walking on glass.” I remembered. I had laughed. Then. Now, I understood. My shoes were still firmly on my feet.
I was then given a more practical hint. “Trust your instinct. Place your foot lightly on different places, till you find an area where most edges are overturned and you feel there is nothing poking you. Place your weight there and then similarly explore the space for the next foot. You will hear glass crushing beneath your feet. But it will be okay.”
I knew there was no going back now. I took off my shoes and gingerly placed one foot forward and felt through the broken pieces. I was able to identify a spot where I was not being pierced. I stepped with all my weight. Glass pieces crushed beneath but, surprisingly, did not hurt at all. The next step was the same—and the next and in seconds I was on to the other side too! Uncut, unhurt, unscathed. I couldn’t believe it.
“You said you had been cut by glass earlier when you stepped on a broken piece by accident. So why didn’t you cut yourself now? Because you had stepped on them not by accident but with an awareness. Also you trusted your instinct rather than what has been told to you over the years-that glass always cuts. This is just how we treat life. We let accidents happen to us all the time. When what we need to do is simply become aware and make things happen for us,” said Priya.
On the way back home, the buoyant feeling that comes from having cracked a difficult task was unmistakable. Priya’s words kept ringing in my ears. “You have achieved the impossible, only because you set your mind to it. Now you can go out and get anything you want.”
Right. So I took out my appointment diary and made an entry for the next day: talk to the boss about that salary hike.