Life’s Little lessons

So I have this young friend of mine who has very recently started working ( ulp, that “young” sounded so prophetically absurd :P, 4 years of working in the industry and you develop that cynical, superficial superior attitude of been everywhere done everything, when you are still at the same old level :P, ), and we keep interacting over the new professional life this friend is getting attuned to. And having just gotten back to working after a Yeambeah hiatus of a year, it is interesting to note buddy’s experiences and relate them to where I as well as some of my other friends were about 5 years ago. Trying to gain a footing into an as yet unfamiliar world, each day a new myth being broken and newer ones being formed, to be broken again the next day. And I guess all of us do go through the same stuff and the new ones ( this poor friend of mine :-s) find themselves being given a lot of gyaan by the so called been there done that souls around (yours truly :-s).

But the point of my post is not this. Just the other day, my friend talked about her first what she called a “small” achievement at office. Some activity that she was given responsibility of and she had executed and was happy about. And I somewhere sensed an almost childlike innocent glee in that one moment which led me to make this statement “life is all about those small victories........ and they all accumulate into "life is good" finally”

And then later I realized “ wah betelaaal, tune to ek dum super duper philosopher baat bol di, tu kahan tha ab tak, mere Socrates ki paanchveen santaan”.:D

The whole thing did get me thinking actually. When was the last time in my last company that I had felt happy. I always had found myself cribbing and complaining about a lot of things just like I guess most of us, and failed to appreciate our own small small achievements. That first well drafted email to the boss, which elicited a good response, or the first well made slide no 3 for the boss’s presentation, or a first successful follow up with a vendor. Small, insignificant perhaps, but well victories for sure. And how many times do we end up just glossing over them, in search for that really really big achievement that would get us that hugggeee promotion or salary jump of whatever. Result? We keep feeling underutilized, underachieved, frustrated and what not. And the result, we end up not liking whatever we were doing, even if we were really doing it well, and make our lives even more miserable.

Now wait, what the hell are you talking about chaos? Are you trying to scuttle ambition? You think its wrong to go for the BIG thing in life? What kind of a dolt are you?

Naah, nothing like that. I am not even hinting at ambition. God knows I have huge ambitions in life that I am working towards, and you very soon will see me at that CII awards function taking the best top honcho of the year award ( abe punter, I am trying to bribe the jury right now, sshsshh). But this has got no relation to ambitions and the like. Not even close. All I am saying, even as you work towards that great president of the biggest I bank ( errr I seem to have a thing or two for them don’t I) career, do take time out to appreciate your smaller achievements and enjoy them if only for a moment. Trust me, no one else would pat your back for these small things, they are really small, really insignificant for everyone around. But whoever stopped you from patting your own back once in awhile. Or telling some good friend of yours who you know would appreciate it, and hearing him / her applaud you for it. Its that feel good factor which would give you a high.

It wont do much, but it’ll perhaps make you like what you are doing well enough to want to excel in that. And actually do.

Sometimes i think its actually good to get that child out in you and let him or her enjoy those small small things in life even it relates to work. The child is always supreme and works best i guess. In fact this reminds me, just today a freind of mine commented on this old photo from college and asked " Bacche Chaos kahan hai tu"??.......and i actually wanted to say " sir, main to idhar hi hoon"......coudlnt truly say that though. :/

This is a post and a note for my own self. And I know you would find a lot of self help books perhaps mentioning the same old thing and this is perhaps an old wine in a new bottle story. :P. but well I liked that thought and wanted to blog about it.

And I think I owe my friend for this “sochful” post. Thanks buddy. Cheers to you :).