The Gift of Life

A mentor and an Aim     

     

In major part of my life I have been without any aim, I have been moving with the flow. But there was always a trust that where ever I will reach I will be happy because I did had a mentor for some crucial years in my life.  There is no guarantee that whatever your mentor says and believes will hold good for you and your future. The good part about having a mentor in your life is that they can help you locate the hidden traps of life. A great mentor according to me is not the one who knows what to do but one who knows what not to do. Anyone who can caution me about the traps would be of great help in life rather than someone who can tell me where the treasures are hidden. Having a mentor is best when accompanied with an aim in life.

Aim is that important part of life without which I think the life was not worth living. Not having an aim is like giving exams without any results in the end to compare your progress. I recently lost my mentor but found an aim. My aim in life is to be HAPPY, all my actions in life are now driven by one innate desire to be happy and I seek happiness in all things and actions around me. To be happy is only possible when you spread happiness when you give importance to what you have in hand rather than what you can and what you could have achieved.

Strengthen the Strength

In life, one always runs after achieving what is not with them the things which they have always wanted, the skills they always wanted to improve upon. Achieving what you desire in life is very important or that vacuum is always there, that regret is always there about not being able to do what you always wanted in life. But is that really important? Will it take you towards success? Since I entered higher education in life, I learnt the term SWOT. I did my SWOT too and like every one else I too had weakness and some strengths.  I ended up taking close to heart all the weakness in me and started working towards them so they are gone; I wanted a blank space in my weakness columns of SWOT report card. I ran to overcome my weaknesses. But after a while I realized that I started losing the flare in me although I tried overcoming all my drawbacks. I was stunned to see that even though I am trying to be perfect and get rid of all my weaknesses still I am loosing what I was. The charm was somewhere losing its shine.

The reason was me. I worked upon my weakness but I forgot that I had some strength too. It was my strengths because of which I was what I was. My strengths were the things which shaped my character; they gave me the flare which made me overcome all my obstacles. Now I was at a position where I realized that in order to be better I have lost the basis platform which made me what I was. Working on your grey areas is important but it’s even more important that you retain what you are known for, the strengths you posses.

Weakness is good till the time is stays with you , if you don’t have any weakness people will not talk about you because no one want to talk about a perfect man, because a perfect man does not exist.

A friend in NEED but not a Friend INDEED

Working for long hours all the months can be pressurizing at times and it can be more frustrating when one stays away from his hometown. Been in corporate sector one can expect that he will have to relocate often esp. in India where there are only a few states with industries and corporate offices. One big issue with living in such hi tech cities is that all of them have a different crowd and their own way of living which all immigrants have to get accustomed as early as possible. The reason I am saying this is that all of this can be very hard to handle and may lead to consumption of alcohol and cigarettes.

Staying away from home it is generally difficult for people to find a good company or even a friend who can act as a support as a result one has to resort to smoking and drinking at times just to socialize with people who are around or seclusion can be dangerous at times. This happened to lot of people around me. I have a habit of asking people as to why they smoke and almost all of them had to REASON rather they had EXCUSES.  All of them had one sentence to offer me “do you have better option than this for a Saturday night” and to be very frank I did not have any thing. But when I started searching for alternatives to enjoy rather than drinking and smoking I found out that the cities in which we live (corporate cities) have only PUBS and BARS on the name of entertainment or one might go for a movie at most. Thus smoking and drinking becomes the favorite past times of those who want to relax but without realizing the Ill effects on health.

The government of many countries are coming forward and spending a lot of funds to help people who smoke and drink realize that it can cause serious health concerns, but I suppose that someone who drinks and smokes regularly knows that it is harm full for health, but now he cannot help it because he is addicted.  Rather than spending a fortune on advertisement and awareness the need of the hour is to establish REHABILITATION centers where people who wish to be cured and helped can enroll and help themselves, if funding allows people can be offered free service and helped rather than  just being informed.

Awareness is required but for the disciplined, others want help!!

STAY AWAY FROM THIS

Everyone I met in this small life of mine is somewhere very fascinated with one thing which they all love and are interest all time, irrespective how badly they deny it in public “criticizing others” I cannot make out from where do people get the free time and energy to waste on talking shit about people in school, offices and now days even families. Why do we care about what others are doing? Are we afraid of them? Do we take others as a threat? Or are we suffering from inferiority complex?

What I fear the most about these people is that they have the habit to change other people’s mind and thinking so fast and with so clean intentions that everyone will think that yes, the other person is WRONG. They can even coax your friends away from you with good score, your friends will also doubt you and your friendship.

Some where I have observed this too much and consider these people as a potential threat to me and all the people who consider me a friend. These are people who are JUDGMENTAL over small things in life and have half knowledge about everything which they consider to be complete.

Suggestion- stay away from people who make judgment on personality over an argument of an action, APNI AKAL LAGAO, make your own opinion and cherish it. And if you are one those who makes judgments, please take a break, make judgments but don’t impose them on others. You might fall in your own trap.

Bossaholic

After getting into corporate life I learnt that there are basically 3 nightmares in an employee’s life; Cost cutting, monotonous work and most feared is the boss. I have been observing for months that BOSS is the one who no one likes, irrespective of him being good or bad or neutral. People have developed a habit of cribbing about their bosses among friends and colleagues. What wrong has the creature done to the employees that they hate him so much?

Bosses are there to control all the activities in the office as well as keep the employees satisfied, I guess they are able to take control of the office activities but they are surely not able to satisfy everyone in the team. Some employees are unhappy because they are not able to take long vacations even though they have spared leaves, some are unhappy because the boss is not promoting the work they do, some are unhappy because nothing good is happening to them (I was also surprise to hear that from someone). People have made it a habit to criticize their bosses if things are not going their way but they don’t understand the situation can be even worse if their boss actually becomes the devil they think he is.

If he is not giving you leaves it’s not because he doesn't want to you to enjoy a vacation it is because the company policy is such that he cannot allow a certain number of people be absent from the team at a single day, who would manage the work ? Who will meet the deadlines? Who will look after the troublesome client who always wants his work done on time? And trust me he is not doing this for his personal grudges with any one of us, he makes you work hard because he is paid to get work done from his team and in the process to make sure that he achieves it, he has to  put work first then employees. So it is not the boss who is evil, it is the work who makes the boss evil.

I strongly believe that making a good relation and being genuine with your boss works wonders, discussing your problems and your approach towards that problem helps your boss to understand you in a better way as a result one can develop healthy relations with every BOSS. Let’s start looking at him from a good prospective.

Every leader no matter how strong he is wants the love of his team, whether he accepts it or not

The Image DRAMA

A good Image is what all of us want today, that is why we invest so much on clothing, personality development and all other grooming options available to us. Anything at all which makes us look different from the crowd. All these activities are done to make a superior or a unique image of one in front of others.

Why do we make an image about someone in our mind??? Why is it worth?? The reason is because we are in constant searching mode for someone who can be our friend who can be a good company in an outing one and most importantly one who can be trusted. So the image is a report card. Thus maintaining a good report card is important. There are 2 ways by which you can present your image among your peers. One can choose to project something about himself or he can be himself and let others project what he is.

The projected image is formed when one according to the environment showcase certain qualities which he may not possess, this helps him to be the star of the group and thus people start expecting the same skills from him more often. The problem here is that if you fake, it might be suicidal. Because your peers have already made a good image about you in their mind, they trust you and they desperately want you to live up to their expectation. But if you don’t the entire trust and affection which you got will be lost PERMANENTLY. Because what you did by faking your action is that you triggered an interest in the minds of people who are not like you and might not get along good with you, but as you stimulated it with your actions they are attracted and would want you to reciprocate. And responding to their expectations every time is not possible for you because you are not the same person as you showcased. But ironically speaking if you can fake and be a good at it, you sure can gain a lot of momentum.

On the other hand being yourself and not doing anything just to impress others is when people take time to formulate an image about you. This is a long term process but for sure it is a permanent thing. When you try to be yourself and your activities are not an outcome for influencing someone then your start respecting your individuality and appreciate yourself and most importantly you respect everyone around you and would not like to plague it with people who do not respect you and themselves.

 When you try not to impress everyone, you impress the right one.

P.S. there is no moral or learning in this one, but for sure, I would want people to pay some extra attention on image they showcase.

UPGRADE

While studying in school our syllabus use to change regularly, there was always a constant need to change and add certain activities in the school curriculum, Because change is constant in the outside world and it demands us to change with it. Similarly in the corporate lifestyle one needs to adapt and respect the environment, upgrade with it, as well as maintain the skill set which he currently posses.

Why would we change our wardrobe with new fashion? Simple, because we want to be updated with our friends and social circle and Fashion trends is one thing which makes you look cool among them. Similarly, how equip are you with the work environment and new technologies in the market makes you cool among employers and increase your chances in corporate world.

Upgrading becomes all the more important because most of our work is related to technology, which changes very fast. Even the developers of technology compete between themselves to upgrade to new and better methods before their competitors. From businesses to education hubs we can see change is only constant and permanent thing around us. Most of us just want a new opportunity or a new challenge in work but we forget to do our homework and upgrade our self to take on that opportunity. Taking lessons from the environment we as employees, are we upgrading with the work environment, or are we letting our current work make us a passive worker, which will someday make us loose our employ ability? 

In my opinion one should take knowledge from where ever it comes, if free, should pound on it and grasp as much as possible. Because a few years down the line, Information and knowledge would be the best business and one would pay a fortune to get it.

This is how you  kiss success, So ARE YOU UPGRADED?

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes-.Peter F. Drucker