I saw Sachin Tendulkar with my own eyes, this weekend at IFSO OSSICON in Mumbai.
It’s one thing to see a legend on TV…
It’s another to see them just a few meters away.
When someone who has carried a billion hopes for years speaks in front of you, you feel their aura.
And when they say something, while you can sense their vibes, their words settle deeper into our subconscious.
There are very, very few filters.
So when, in the conference, he said:
“To come out of a setback, a step back is important—to analyze, accept, and improve.”
I accepted it as it was… a pure truth.
It took me straight back to Sydney, 2004.
Sachin was struggling. The Aussies had cracked his weakness… balls outside off-stump.
He kept edging them. Kept getting out.
So what did he do?
In the final Test, he made a choice.
He wouldn’t play a single cover drive.
Not one.
For 241 runs.
He overruled his own instincts.
He stepped back, analyzed, and changed his game to win.
This is why hearing from legends is so powerful they speak from deep, lived experiences.
And what he said is where I believe most of us go wrong.
Many times, when things don’t work, we just do more of the same.
We cling to the old and fear letting go.
It’s not easy to ask ourselves, “Is my approach the problem?”
Years ago, my life was all about managing my career, patients, and bills… and clearly, it wasn’t working.
So I worked with my mentor.
And he worked with me on the same thing:
Pausing. Analyzing. Resetting.
Just think about where you might be struggling right now.
Is a business strategy failing, but are we too stubborn to change it?
Is a habit holding us back, but are we afraid to drop it?
Sachin says that stepping back doesn’t mean giving up.
It means getting ready to come back stronger.