Look for good in people, be compassionate: Virat Kohli

India and RCB captain Virat Kohli, alongside his wife and Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma, interacted on a live educational session with students. The session was organized by online education platform Unacademy.

Virat initiated the session by talking about the current situation in the world vis-à-vis the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Obviously the government’s directives, everyone is aware… for us (him and Anushka) we started looking at things with a lot more compassion and that for us is probably the biggest takeaway from what’s happening. I think it’s very important for everyone to stay positive. Look for the good in people, be compassionate. You can go into details of everyone’s work and what everyone might be going through in their respective lives on a daily basis to make things happen for one another. So, I think that compassion, the love, the respect has gone up.”

Virat said that it was the first time he was doing an interactive session like this. The RCB captain praised the frontline workers and other sections who have been risking their lives to fight the pandemic in the country.

“We have observed in a lot of places that people are doing things which they genuinely feel from their hearts, whether its feeding strays (animals), whether it’s the healthcare workers, going into dangerous places and trying to help people. People getting food to the hungry. All these things are coming out of lot of love and lot of compassion. This is something that has really inspired us. It has pushed us into a direction where we want to also keep following this path of life.”

Talking about his cricketing journey, the captain said that his career was pretty similar to Anushka Sharma’s and they both came from middle-class backgrounds.

“Our first and foremost focus was on how to do well in studies. Beyond a point, our passion was so strong for our careers that we chose those paths. But that does not mean we were not honest with our academics. If you truly love something, the conviction, the passion and commitment behind that are very important.”

Speaking about how he deals with challenges and copes with results that don’t go his way, Kohli emphasized on the need to be grateful and getting rid of the negatives.

“Sometimes when things don’t go your way, you have to accept it as a part of life. Sometimes we do everything in our ability, but we don’t succeed. But the question is why do we only ask this when we don’t do well. Why do we always say why me when we fail? Why can’t we say why me when we succeed? Because there was no guarantee of success. So, if God is giving you a certain amount of success in your life, you have to be grateful for that. You can’t keep pointing out the negatives all the time, because that also shifts your focus to something that is not important. It’s important to learn from negatives but also to move forward in a way that you are appreciating those times came to make you a better person.”

He also spoke about rejections from his earlier days of cricket and how he overcame those to reach where he is today.

“The first time I was rejected in states selections, I just cried and howled till 3 in the morning. I could not believe it. Because I had scored well. Everything was going perfectly for me. I had performed and reached that stage and then trial matches happened and I was rejected. I kept asking my coach why it did not happen and I could not make sense of it. But when there is passion, there is commitment, you get back up and the motivation comes back to you because that is what you really love to do.”