How To Create Your Own Reality
my name is dhyani
and i’m here to talk about my reality
from the perspective that i chose to
look
at it the perspective that we choose to
have
has a tremendous and a lasting impact
on our reality imagine a six-year-old
being held in the arms by a chief
minister
for just having played a game yes
i was six years old when i started
playing chess
when very frankly it all began with me
fidgeting my sister’s game
she was participating in the national
under 18 event
and that’s when i started disturbing her
my mother was in a fix she went and
requested the organizers
sir please let my younger one say
she doesn’t know anything the stars must
have aligned with my favor back then
the organizers agreed and yes a
six-year-old
was participating for the very first
time in the under-18
national event it was a great thing for
me
i won the youngest player’s prize dr
park after this
i played two more tournaments with my
sister
with having just some basic knowledge of
chess
and again i won the youngest players
right there too
because hey it was meant for others so
that feeling
that gave me a
very very good feeling it made me
feel celebrated
and i always wanted to feel that way so
that was the day
when i decided that i am never
going to let anybody come in my way
of me feeling that way
as a child i had a very secluded
childhood
now all of these things did come with a
sizeable social stigma
there were many people who were not so
supportive of my decision
of pursuing sports as a career
but even as a child i paved my own path
i did not let an outsider’s perception
hinder my internal truth as a child
it was very easy for me to give up on my
dreams
as a child i had very clear goals set
for my future
i knew exactly what i wanted to do in
life
so with all this
it must be looking wow it must have been
easy for this girl to play
but let me tell you it wasn’t easy at
all
all of these things did come with
endless hours
of effort and practicing understanding
the game
because all of us know chess is a very
complex game
so yes endless hours of work
i never won everything at the first time
that i tried
not every title that i tried i got in
the first attempt
i was losing games but i
always went back to it
we all have heard if you fall seven
times
get up the eighth i’m sure i must have
done it
thousands of times because hey that’s
what sports teaches you
i clearly remember one incident of my
life
which has actually done everything
else in an absolute different man
i was traveling to spain for completing
my woman international masters title
i was there only for two tournaments i
somehow knew from first that i’ll be
able to do it in two tournaments so i
only chose to play two tournaments
and my first tournament went very nice
very well but somehow there are certain
conditions
that needs to be met in order to achieve
that title in a particular competition
like for example you need to play
against certain number of people from
different countries
need to play with certain number of
people
with certain titles but i knew i have a
second competition i have a second
tournament in my pocket i’m going to do
it
i failed very well in my second
tournament
and now it was the last game of the
tournament
i was an inch away from clinching my
title
and how lucky could i get i
was playing against a childhood friend
of mine that day
i was like wow i am sorted
he’s my friend i know him i know he’s
since we were like kids
so this should be easy for me
but that day things didn’t go as i
planned
and i lost the game
i was broken i was shattered
i didn’t know what to do i just left the
tournament hall
without saying a word right opposite to
the tournament hall
there was a busy street i went there and
sat on a bench
i started crying i was crying profusely
suddenly something within me
spoke to me if
you were able to do it in the past
you can certainly do it in the future
and that is when i decided
that i am going to do it again i went to
my mom and i told her hey mama listen
we need to extend our stay i’m going to
play more tournaments
and we did extend our stay and in the
next very tournament i made my title
so what changed what changed
i just changed my perception towards the
entire situation
i analyzed i saw things which made me
lose
i saw things that i did in the past that
made me win
so if you decide something if you
believe in yourself
there’s nothing else that would actually
ever matter
there’s one more incident that i would
like to highlight
it was just a normal day for me when i
was just sitting relaxing
that’s when i get a call from the chief
minister’s office
i’m saying what they say
we are planning to attempt a record
i was like okay he said you have to play
against 150 players simultaneously
would you like to do that but before
accepting
please do think previously a boy
i had attempted it and he couldn’t pass
the second hour of the game and
everything was cancelled
and that very minute i was like
wow i am going to attempt something
that was previously attempted and not
done
and i made the record by playing
simultaneous chess against 150 players
over a span of eight hours by walking
more than 25 kilometers
it was a moment of pride for me
when the chief minister handed the
report to me
and told me i knew you would do it
and that’s why i chose you
such words they make you feel powerful
such words they strengthen your
willpower
having said this
i also wanted to be academically
successful
not just in sport but also wanted
success in academics
so i chose to be an engineer
my mother and my father they were very
supportive of my decision
i chose engineering for myself i
attended college
for very few months i actually attended
it quite late because i was playing
tonight
i remember one incident when the teacher
told me
now we have this viva session where the
teacher is basically the time for the
teachers
to show what you don’t know so
yeah so that was the time
and the teacher asked me your questions
and i was unable to answer
seriously i was i was clueless and she
told me
that is what she told me and i was like
i’ll show you
just wait this was probably the
end of the first year for us and that’s
then my graph from this went to this
okay there was a point of time when my
teachers
couldn’t believe the answers that i gave
and by the end of eighth semester they
were rubbing in
their eyes in shock because
i talked to the entire college with 94
percentage
and to let you know one very interesting
thing
i was invited to my college
on the engineer’s day and can you guess
who was there to receive me yes the same
very teacher who told me i couldn’t do
anything
so when people challenge you when life
challenge you
all you’ve got to do is believe in your
own self if you believe in your own self
there is
nothing that you cannot do while i was
enjoying
my professional and academic success
i was the only woman international
master in gujarat
everything going in my way everything
going
exactly as per how i wanted it to go
i was also a girl who was madly and
deeply in love for 10 years of her life
10 long years yes it requires
lot of investment emotional investment
investment of trust because you are
trusting
a third person apart from yourself
okay somebody
who has all the powers of destroying you
i let a person inside my santa
the person who built with me the person
who always tried to
pull me to a level below this
whereas as humbly as i could say i was
far more accomplished
despite of me knowing all of the facts
i tried i tried my best
to make the relationship work
they had restrictions which you cannot
even imagine
i wasn’t allowed to wear the type of
clothes that i wanted to
i wasn’t allowed to drive a car
i wasn’t allowed to travel alone
by the way i am an ardent traveler i
have traveled more than 30 countries
i wasn’t allowed to travel alone well
none of my professional
achievements would mean a thing to him
he would never accompany me to any of
these award functions why
because it would make him feel lower
than you
so i was in a situation
where i was confused my heart
always wanted this relationship to work
my mind always had the red light
breaking
and that is when i came to know
that he was cheating on me he was
cheating on me
with a person who knew about us
for the past 10 years with a person who
was present on our social media
what even broke me more was that there
was no closure to this
there was no reason of the entire
cheating
i only wanted to know the why
but
i never got that why i never got an
answer to that why
i never wanted to go back to him in fact
because you cannot
expect a different end by rereading the
same book
while i was trying to figure out about
this why
that is when within a month of this
incident he got married to her
i was broken i was shattered
everything was over i didn’t know what
to do
and that is the day i decided
to get up every day and do what needs
the doing
i gave myself small mind stones every
day
and i decided i would achieve them in my
own
basically when a person decides
to do things on their own and
passes through such tough situations in
the life
on their own they stop holding on to the
people
who do not want to stay in their life
anymore
and they focus on what and who are
important in their life people at this
point of time
they tell me diani do not share your
personal life with anybody
you’re a girl remember that blings will
be put on you
it’s you who must have done something
but i
look at this situation with a completely
different perception
i thought if this has happened to me
it could happen to any one of you i
wanted to share the story with the world
i wanted the world to know that it’s
okay
to not have a relationship work it’s
okay to not know
everything it’s okay to be betrayed
but what’s not okay is not lifting
yourself
up after this and after this day
there was no looking back for me i
decided
i will accomplish each and everything
that i
always wanted to do which i wasn’t able
to do because of the
mentally and emotionally abusive
relationship
the first thing that i did was bought
myself a car
the second thing i did i booked my
tickets and traveled solo
and within a year of all of this thing
i founded my own chess academy
i started teaching i always wanted to
give it back to
all those kids who had big dreams in
life like me
i found my passion in teaching and
from that day onwards till date we have
tutored more than 10
000 kids so
what if people try to manipulate you so
what if you felt broken
so what if you feel shattered
people are always going to get their way
around you
you need to believe in yourself
you need to remember that every failure
has a little chance that you learn from
it
and you will succeed the next time
the most broken people have
impersonations of true art
and even and even
the ended world is spinning on its own
axis
so that is what i must do
that is all what you must do
find your axes and keep spinning
be resilient be persistent be perceptive
most of all be you thank you for
listening to me