Inspiration passion motivation. And many more words that
keep coming out from a lot of idiots at office. I feel stupid discussing these
words. There are only thrown about while pretending to mean serious business.
The other day this lovely young lady in my team was having a
discussion with me. We were discussing how to choose the designs for putting the
opaque stickers on the cabins. She remarked “aren’t these designs too dull. They
would restrict the light and make the cabins duller.” She was referring to some
design someone liked. “ya sure. But it’s ok. I don’t care. Do it if they like
it.” I have learnt to buy peace. Of course I say my point of view, but if it’s
not worth fighting, I don’t bother. There are many battles to be won. You don’t
exhaust your energy on a few. “but, your cabin will also get affected, wont it?
Shouldn’t that bother you?” she urged. “luisten lady. First things first. Its not
my cabin. I sit there and I work there. but its not my cabin. It belongs to the
company and they can take it away whenever they want. You never ever fall in
love with your cabin or work space or anything else.” Then I explained “once
many years ago, in the year 2000, when I was around 25 years old, my office
shifted to a new location and they gave me one of the new ‘manager’ cubicles
that lined the sides of the room”. This is a typical design thing. The big
manager cubicles line the outsides with the chicken stock getting cubicles in
the middle. I have always felt that the design is fundamentally flaws. It should
be the reverse. The ones doing monotonous work should get the best views and
windows. But no one will possibly listen to me. “so, they gave this lovely
cubicle and I liked it. And then suddenly another division of the firm, the
core division with its sales guys wanted to move in and they downgraded me to
another cubicle in the middle. I felt so bad that time. I think I almost cried.
From then on, I never fell in love with my place. I try and stay focused on the
work and work around the place. That’s why I sit out many times, I come out and
everyone uses my cabin and they are free to roam around. You never fall in love
with your seat. You never do that.”. “acha, she said. So is that incident what
motivated you to reach this level”. “NO. Impossible. No insult can motivate me
to perform or do work. That is gone long back. My motivation is inside of me. Myself.
I don’t look for motivation outside. No one can motivate me. Not my boss, not
my family, not my peers, no body. I decide what I have to do and how much to
perform. My standards are internal to me. Why look outside? It’s all inside.”
This has been my belief for many years now. Look inside. No such
bull such as positive reinforcement, positive thinking and goal setting. I have
never done any of this and I don’t really believe in it. You do your best, stay
in the moment and look inside of you why you want to do or not do something.
When I work, I decide how good I want to do or what I want to perform. So far
the standards are the ones I have chosen to keep or benchmark. Why should
anyone tell me what I need to aim for? They might guide or I may be inspired. But
the goals are mine and mine alone. They are for me to set, understand and
follow. And what goals are we talking about? Whose knows what the future holds
like? I have never been a great goal setter. I am talking about lofty goals. Sure
I have small milestones, some inspiring benchmark to achieve but not really
goals the way the rest seem to have or preach to have. And for the first time I read something
somewhere that resonated with I am saying. This guy in the video is talking
about still power which is opposed to will power. He has written a book called
still power. Listen to the video.
I haven’t yet read the book and its always dangerous to
extrapolate from a single interview but the fact is that I hear this man in the
this interview and I resonate with what he says. Look inside. Don’t sledge your
opponents. It’s not needed. Feel good about yourself. I think most of the time
my sledging has never helped us.at best it may have helped my team rally
around. But over the years I have learned to respect my opponents. Be friendly
its ok. You are here to play your sport. In cricket as well I keep telling my
team, relax, and don’t bother about the opposition. Look at the ball and then
you have the bat. That is all. The game is still played with the bat and ball. Put
your mind to the game and read it well.
The last year I was in the zone multiple times while playing
or leading. No need to give great pep talks, no need to tell people to focus on
winning. Focus on playing the game well. If enough people play the game well,
you will win. Winning is an outcome not the destination. The journey, the
plain, the mental toughness, that is the destination. Love it and live with it.
I kept worrying that with Jispa I never ever let her push
toward a medal. You swim, you improve your timing. You enjoy your sport. She wants
to do well, because she wants to do well. You win – great. You don’t win –
great. Did your practice and preparation be worth it all. Yes. That’s important.
And the Zone. The zone is always inside of you. It’s not outside. Whenever I have
played the best cricket is when I have been in a stillness as far as my mind is
concerned. It is focused on what to do then. Freedom from fear in turn is the
freedom to play. Not regretting the past nor anticipating the future.
For Jispa, the freedom to lose is exactly the freedom to
win. So when she swims she swims for herself, for the sake of swimming, for
swimming as fast she wants to swim. When you have a 50 mtr dash, you can’t
think or not think anything. You just go and swim. You back yourself. Whenever I
have run the parents race – what was I thinking. Nothing. Just the feel of running
fast and running through the race. You are just enjoying the moment. The rhythm
and the grace of it. That’s all. You can’t think positive or negative. Of course
longer sports like cricket give you a lot of time to think. But when you are
about to play, you come back and you stop your thoughts. You see the field and
then focus on the ball. Time always almost stands still when you are in your
zone. You don’t fight negative or positive thoughts. You merely enjoy the
moment. That’s all. Focusing on yourself and in your role vis-à-vis the team.
Talking about negative thoughts – I just chanced upon this
article.
The power negative thinking it says. I like that. I like
this paragraph a lot “The Stoics
recommended “the premeditation of evils,” or deliberately visualizing the
worst-case scenario. This tends to reduce anxiety about the future: when you
soberly picture how badly things could go in reality, you usually conclude that
you could cope. Besides, they noted, imagining that you might lose the
relationships and possessions you currently enjoy increases your gratitude for
having them now. Positive thinking, by contrast, always leans into the future,
ignoring present pleasures.” This stuff
has worked for me innumerable times in the past. Whenever I have faced tremendous
pressure or stress, my counter has been to know what’s the worst that could
happen and how I would deal with it. Then the present doesn’t seem so bad after
all. It’s right. That’s been my coping mechanism for the last decade or so. That’s
helped me block out the issues, helped me block out the pain. In fact once your
worst case scenario is acceptable then you don’t really mind the pain. In fact I
would even so much as say – I end up enjoying the pain. Possibly in saying –
take that dumbass, I am unaffected by you.
There is another para in the article that caught my
attention “Even goal setting, the
ubiquitous motivational technique of managers everywhere, isn’t an undisputed
boon. Fixating too vigorously on goals can distort an organization’s overall
mission in a desperate effort to meet some overly narrow target, and research
by several business-school professors suggests that employees consumed with
goals are likelier to cut ethical corners.” This is also something I have argues for. Too
much goal setting always, always gets employees to cut corners. To achieve only
to please. To tick mark. Yes the work is done. These guys look for external
goals, external targets and then simply tick mark saying that work has been
done.
Surely goals are important but mindless pursuit of them and relentless
follow up of goals that are generally given top down without participation lead
to such a situation. In the video the author argues that goals are limiting. They
don’t allow for freedom to work around. That is true. Goals are limited only by
your imagination. A set of smaller victories sometimes helps a lot. Play every
day, every ball. One at a time. The broad strategy fits in by itself if you
take care of small victories. That’s why it always difficult to be bounded by a
large inflexible goal.
Well anyways. That’s a lot of gyan for one post. But nice. It
was good to stumble upon this video and the article. It suddenly reinforced
what I seemed to have found and believed in – all these years.
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