Many people spend the majority of their lives in flux, confusion and chaos. I’m sure many more exist, drifting in their own orbits trying to deal with what life doles out… on a daily basis. What most lack, I believe, is a sense of balance, and the ability to extract value from everyday life.Work, ideally, should not occupy more than 40% of our lives. The rest of it should be focused on the other things that define us as human beings.
But the truth is different, at least for the majority of people. Many of us, while growing up, have succumbed to the phenomenon of mediocrity, that seeps in like air, settles in our core and pivots on the concept of benchmarking and averages. Many people get sucked into this game and take the beaten path. They end up with jobs they don’t relate to and live through their professional lives with a sense of detachment. Living in exile, they become machines. Not in sync with what they do, it’s like watching a video of someone else performing the rituals, the motions of everyday work life. They accept life the way it is, in the algorithmic tunnel of work, home, weekend rituals, and then back to work. It’s a rut, an infinite cycle that hollows you out. Success in this algorithm is defined by benchmarking yourself against the average of your peers. Given where you are, is there a way out? Is there a possibility that we strike a balance, converge these variables into a balance that is more coherent, vibrant and clutter free?
To understand my take on this, you need to become a surgeon for a while. Not the MBBS kind, but a surgeon of your own life. The first step is to sit back, zoom out of the mundane – and decipher the clutter that you’ve accumulated in all these years.
Define what success and happiness mean to you, not to your peers. And then, with a carefully selected scalpel start the process of cutting off the irrelevant variables – Irrelevant people, things you do to tick-the-boxes, thoughts driven by peer benchmarking, assets to be owned to achieve a certain status, which holiday you need to take to add to your drawing room conversation, and which car you drive. Chop everything into small pieces, and recalibrate your mind. Pick the things that give you joy, pick the people who you share happiness with, and do what gives you value - today, tomorrow and forever.
Sounds ideal, philosophical? Probably not. To some, travel is their thing. Go with who you love, and take in the beauty of the place. No ‘tickthe-box’ itineraries, no deadlines to catch. Never the tourist, always the traveller.
Strike a balance. I embraced yoga a few years back, and it’s now become central to my being. Every day, I am born again – a perfect balance between mind and body.
For some, it is human contact. We often look at workplaces as clinical, mundane places. The truth is, it is always people who make organizations – and each person is different, with their own sensitivities, drivers and perspectives. If you are a leader, you work in sync with each team member’s strengths and revel in the results. If you’re a team player, you learn and give symbiotically - to achieve team synergy.
The immediate family and your inner circle will be the select few who have emerged unscathed from your surgery; people you enjoy being with, who give you a sense of calm and true happiness. So take a deep breath, pick up the scalpel and start carving out the new you. It’s the trip, not necessarily the arrival.
