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The best thing of 2020
2020 was a different year in many ways.
We were indoors not out of choice, still out of choice.
Our trips didn’t go as planned.
So didn’t our plans.
Amidst all this, we survived the least expected year of our lives.
Amidst all this, we held our hopes high.
Amidst all this, we even found solace in memes.
It is all a call of how much we are blessed with.
We need little to survive, and we can flip our lives around for the health of our family and the world.
Is it enough to ask questions?
We often ask ourselves a lot of questions:
Why am I doing this?
Why do I not want to do this?
What do I want to achieve on taking this path?
All are very meaningful, very important questions.
However, are we allowing ourselves to get to the answers?
Or are our lives a big question mark because of never getting out of a whirlwind of questions?
Questions give different directions, answers show the path that drives actions.
Is it cool to quickly get an MBA?
MBA immediately after graduating looks like a cool choice.
We will be a B-school graduate, have a great job, and finally “settle down”.
Gaining some work experience before that is coined as wastage of time.
However, what if the work experience turns out to be fruitful for an MBA?
What if we enter the MBA not to top the class rather understand how business decisions work?
What if we knew that to understand business, it pays to have work experience?
The goal of college is to understand how college can help us. For an MBA that might mean gaining real world experience before college.
What’s the worst case scenario?
When we say we don’t know what to do, it isn’t entirely true.
We always know what to do. We just don’t know whether what we want to do will work out or not.
That fear of failure paralyses us from anticipating even the good that might come out of it.
What if we asked ourselves: What is the worst case?
What if we imagined that worst case playing out in reality?
And when we did, what if we asked ourselves: “Will I be okay despite that?”
If we somehow get to a point where we will be okay despite the worst case scenario actually playing through, the tough decision won’t be tough anymore.
Visualising the worst case scenario doesn’t make the future worse, it just makes the present better by helping us decide.
Performing amidst pressure
There are two kinds of pressures:
Performance pressure and Peer pressure.
Performance pressure is the one we apply on ourselves.That we have to deliver. That we have to win. That we have to achieve.
It is the story in our head.
Peer pressure is the one we experience due to others. That they are doing so well. That there is so much to learn from them. That I too can be just as good.
We tend to perform better when we are surrounded by performers and achievers.
That is how top athletes train themselves.
Pressure can make a hard potato soft and a soft egg hard.
Choose your pressure!
Generalist versus Specialist
In our parents’ generation, it was a privilege to be a specialist.
To be the best and fastest in the world at one thing was the only way to survive.
With unlimited opportunities in the information age, things have reversed.
As someone who wants to climb the corporate ladder, our role is managing people instead of core work.
This needs breadth, experience and understanding of work, in addition to core skills.
Thus, becoming a generalist comes with possibilities of broader spectrum and a stronger profile.
If we are a generalist, we have a speciality of taking different paths.
How to find what you want to do?
We’re confused about what to do in life.
And, college education certainly hasn’t helped.
Why not explore our way through life, instead of being in a hurry to settle down?
Try out stand up comedy and share videos, and look at the reactions of people.
Create music if we love it, and see if others resonate with it
Get internships in design or coding, if that is what intrigues you.
It is better to be lost and busy in the chase of finding yourself, instead of being lost and busy in the rat race of never knowing yourself.
Which one to pick?
You have two ideas for your startup, but not sure which one to start with.
Or perhaps two job offers.
Or two career options, and you cannot decide.
You are looking for a solution, but to no avail.
What if we looked for questions instead, whenever we were faced with a dilemma?
Why do I want to make that decision in the first place?
What would change for me because of that decision?
What do we want from that decision?
Looking for questions instead of solutions is about asking questions about the problem.
Dependency
There are some days during the year when Instagram is down..
Sometimes Facebook is, WhatsApp is, Twitter as well.
Very recently when that happened with Google, we all lost it.
“Dependency” was the word of the day.
We suddenly didn’t know what to do. How to spend our time. All we kept doing was check the platform incessantly, showing how much we depend on it.
The next time a platform goes down, try a crazy thing: Go for a walk. Your world is what your eyes see, not what the screen shows! .
We own the screens we own. Not the other way round.
I don’t have the time!
I will spend time with my family later.
That email is important.
I will say “I love you” to my loved ones later.
That love for work is more important.
I will call my parents over the weekend.
Grind on the weekdays is more important.
I don’t have the time!
However, we will have all the time in the world if we had the time for the most important people in our life.
Time is the only thing that is important. Because we never know when will we run out of it.
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