THE WARRIOR’S DESTINY

A great Japanese warrior named Nobunaga was going to war with a

fierce enemy with only one-tenth the number of men the opposition
commanded. He knew that he could win the fight with a well-planned
strategy, but his soldiers were in doubt.
On the way, the leader stopped at a Shinto shrine and told his men:
“After my visit to the shrine I will toss a coin. If the head comes, we will
win; if tails, we will lose. Destiny holds us in her hand.”
Nobunaga entered the shrine and offered his prayers. Then he came
forth and tossed a coin in front of his men. Heads appeared. The soldiers
were filled with confidence and were eager to win the battle.
The Battle went on for 18 days. Nobunaga’s army fought with their limited
manpower and resources. They fought with great conviction and certainty
about the outcome. Finally, they could able to defeat that fierce enemy.
“No one can change the hand of destiny,” one of his attendants told him
after the battle.
“Indeed not,” said Nobunaga and showed the coin which was doubled
with heads on both sides.

The Human mind works in a peculiar way. Rather than true

potential, it works more on self-confidence. Thats the reason Swami
Vivekananda, throughout his lectures, stressed on developing will
power and self-confidence. He used to say, “believe you can drink
all the water of the ocean, believe you can defeat all the strongest
persons on this earth, believe you can do anything and everything
on this planet”. If you just glance through the Vedas, Upanishads,
Purana, and mainly Mahabharata, you will see the ultimate winning
of those persons who have strong SANKALPA SIDDHI. Krishna
says, don’t worry about the outcomes. If you start thinking about
results, your arrow won’t be having that precision and power, you
can’t hit the right target. Work without attachments.
UPSC CSE is also a game, where you have to consistently put
efforts and perform on the battlefield(exam day). You need to
believe that you are going to win this war. Sometimes, it seems like
we are cheating our self. It will be weird to convince ourselves about
success when we have so many backlogs of chapters, pending
syllabus to cover, poor performance in the mocks. But our mind
works like this: “If you believe you can do, you will do. If you
believe you can’t do, you won’t do”.