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