The Exam I Wrote...

During my Personality Development & Business Etiquette exam in my MBA course I was asked to elaborate my views on the importance of positive attitude in life... The following post is the exact reproduction of the answer that I wrote in my paper... Read it and you'll know why I had to post it on my blog (PS: If you find it a bit boring in the begining, I am sorry but I had to write some theoritical crap too to score marks.)

“Life gives you a bad deal, how would you handle it? Relate it to an incident in your life”

A positive attitude is a very important part of a person’s personality. Everyone has some or other problem but you should not be bogged down with these problems. Instead one should stay calm and face these problems to emerge successful. There are eight different ways to develop and maintain a positive attitude like developing a sense of humor, playing your winners, uncluttering your life, insulate yourself etc. Each and every person has his own way of dealing with difficulties faced by him.

I generally tend to use the “Sunny Side Up” approach when I am faced by a difficult situation. I like to see the lighter side of things and I don’t mind laughing at myself when I do something stupid. I can relate this attitude of mine with a situation which is easily THE most embarrassing situation in my life.

When we were in class 11th of our high school our school took us for our first outdoor camping adventure. Now ours was a tiny school situated in an insignificant miniscule town and it was run by a private trust. Usually we were taken on small day picnics to the nearby places and it was our annual extravaganza which everyone was totally psyched about. During my class 11th after spending around 13 years in the shool (yes, I even attended kindergarten in the same school!) We were over the roof when we heard that we were going on a 4 day camping trip and that the place was not like always just half an hour away from our little speck of a town.

We went to the Pirotan Island, which is a marine sanctuary located just off the coast of Jamnagar. We were super thrilled and as soon as we jumped from the boat upon our island we started pitching tents for the first time in our life. The evening meal was superb and our camp instructor was telling us what to do and more importantly what not to do during next 4 days. Ummm, I guess I am going in too much detail and I will fall short on my exam time. So anywayz first two days were great, yada yada yada, the fun begins on the third day.

We were supposed to make a ten kilometer marine trek through the knee deep water of the sea. Now what do you expect, except for the mud and slush? The trek was really messy and slippery with us sinking in the mud every now and then. Now, I had gained considerable diameter on my torso by the time I was this old and even the great ocean beds were too meek to bear the weight of thy mighty Anuj Sharma. I hit one patch of mud and marsh which was so soft that I sunk upto my chest in the ground. Now initially people were petrified as our guide had told that sometimes there are patches of quicksand and people thought I would drown. Four or five people (Yeah!!! That’s how heavy I was!!!) came to my rescue and begun pulling me out of the marsh. As they were doing so my track pants decided that they had enough with me and they decided to stay in the stinky torrid confines of the marsh. So Voila!!! There I am standing surrounded by about 50 people (and you know what makes it better? There were teachers and students from other schools too) covered with stinking mud from chest down in nothing but my negligees. Oh boy!!!

Like I said it was easily THE most embarrassing situation in my life and people were laughing, clapping, whistling and even taking pictures of my next best thing to naked. Now I could have easily lost my temper and screamed on people or feel disgusted or sulk the remainder of the trip but who would be at loss but me only. So I took that all in the stride and decided to be a sport about it. I laughed it off and even that night at the campfire when everyone was going hysterical talking about the incident I joined in and laughed my heart out too. People really appreciated that and they were super cool about it. My teachers said that they admire my attitude and for the remaining days of the camp I was the most popular person (Although I still don’t know whether it was because of my attitude or “ahem” the incident.)