This took me a while. Writing about things that happened to you and recalling how you felt is so much easier than dealing with what is happening with you now or how you plan to build the future.

Also, I've been lazy and demotivated. When you aren't doing well on the field, the priority was to figure that out before figuring out how I write about it.

Anyway, here goes:

We often see ourselves dwelling upon our pasts, the good and the bad.

I've spent days, sometimes weeks, visualising my school/college life, wishing I could go back in time and correct SO many things. From habits to relationships to choices, the list goes on.

Likewise, in cricket, I'd spent the best part of my first 5 years focusing on what I've done wrong and how to undo those mistakes. While the intention has always been to be better for the future, rarely is that going to be possible without completely letting go of the past.

Since I started cricket in 2016, after having a bad week on the field, I'd spend the remaining week visualising that moment, revisiting what I did, and rectifying it in my head. I never spent a single second trying to visualise what I will do in the coming week and creating a mental image of self-belief.

What about learnings from the past?

Yes, it's important to learn from our mistakes, but there is a fine line between learning and dwelling upon them.

Very recently, I haven't done well with the bat. I'd shared my run of form in the previous article. It's both difficult and easy when you go through a bad patch.

Difficult: Because you want to and have to bounce back from it.

Easy: Because you know it cannot get worse.

A couple of weeks ago, after the bad run of form, I'd played an innings, similar to many of my previous innings where I just dug out and spent a lot of time in the middle.

We batted first with the Stallions in a must-win tournament game, and I opened again. Deep down inside, I knew it could be my last chance because I've gotten ample opportunities, and I haven't delivered. Getting opportunity and failing is something I can live with; not getting the opportunity to fail, not so much.

Either way, I went to bat with a positive headspace. I'd done a lot of preparations in the nets/bowling machine. Over the years, I've loved taking on challenges, so I always prefer taking the strike instead of being the non-striker.

The first ball went for a 4, and I told myself, this is the day. Well, it partially was and partially wasn't. The next ball, I got defensive again and forward blocked a pretty easy ball that I could have easily dispatched for a single or double.

Over the innings, my strike rate kept dropping from 120-130 to 100-110, and I ended with a strike rate of 90, making 44(49).

The middle part of the innings was super slow once the spinners came in, and playing 49 balls and hitting only 3 boundaries was just not good enough.

After that game, I've been dropped from the main team. We reached the finals, and unfortunately, I wasn't a part of it. We lost the finals and came runners up, which is still a massive achievement from where we were after game 3.

I'm still trying to make my comeback to the team, and I feel it's 1-2 months away, at least.

Now there are two ways to look at this. Let's dive into both thought processes.

Over here, I can sit and criticize the leadership for not backing me when showing signs of improvement. Blame everything and everyone around me but myself.

You start shifting accountability to every external possible place instead of looking deep within and asking yourself the tougher questions, the ones you want to avoid.

You know the answers deep down inside, but you don't want to own it. I have been like that in the past. It gives you mental satisfaction, but in all honesty, all you're doing is lying to yourself in the short term. This will kick in over the long run, and you will have to start taking accountability for your actions.

This also creates a negative spiral in your head, where one bad thought leads to another and takes you to your darkest space.

Another way to look at things (Which is the way I think now, or at least try to)

It takes time to come to this point.

The idea is to realize that everything that life throws at you, even if they are your own doings, is happening so that it puts you in place to prepare for the same situation better.

Let's go back to all of our first relationships. If you're still with that person, good on you. If not, imagine how you felt when that ended. Didn't it feel like this is the worst thing that could happen to you?

Did you ever wonder that this may have happened for you? So you can go on to eventually get better at relationships and finally be with someone where it feels right, and then you look back and realize all the past experiences that happened to put you in the place you are today. And when you're content, you can look back and feel gratitude and even laugh about your worst times because you know the lessons that came out of it.

This applies in life: Work, sport, relationships, hobbies, this blog, literally everything.

Despite being disappointed every week to not get the invite for the games. Despite having major FOMO and not having any cricket games for over 2 weeks.

I kept telling myself that this will make me work harder, and I will only use this as motivation to get better.

If I have to be honest, I take myself and my ego and goals out of the equation and think as a third person. Would I select someone whose scores during the tournament were? 9(8)

4(4)

1(3)

44(49)

No way in hell.

When I understood that, there was no negativity, no blame-shifting. It was freedom and self-accountability at its finest. You then start asking all the right questions.

Positives: I got some downtime, which is why I enjoyed being away from the game and maybe took a breather from blogging/YouTube. I rewatched 'The Last Dance' to get motivated to get fitter again.

Today I have my first game back after that 44 odd, with the Titans. I'm pretty excited. The love for the game and excitement persists when you're away from the 22 yards for too long. There were times I wouldn't say I liked the game when I failed, but now I love it even more when I fail because it is a new day and a new challenge to take on.

Nothing like being out there in the middle. I cannot wait.

I call this 'The Future' because I need to grow as an individual. The only way I can do that is to embrace my present setbacks, learn from my past failures and work beyond limits to ensure this doesn't repeat in "The Future".

Stay tuned to know how that went,

I apologize to the few people that read this and, most importantly to myself, for not being consistent. From here on, no matter what, 4 articles a month, minimum.

I think I will spend less time on packaging articles with images/gifs and focus on what I want to put out there in terms of thoughts and emotions. Let me know what you guys think.