Looking for a job is to let others decide your destiny. So, take your destiny in your own hands. The wise have said ‘if there is not here, there is no hereafter’. This is the path to freedom.
Recession or no recession, job cuts or no job cuts, stop thinking of ‘job security’; change your perspective to ‘job change’. It is a significant shift in approach but one that can be rewarding. I am not preaching here to become disloyal to your organization. Loyalty is never between an individual and an organization; it is between an individual and his way of life.
The connection between any individual and company is ‘Business’ and in this material world, ‘Business’ is only loyal to profitability. If you don’t find it profitable anymore, you quit the company; if the company doesn’t find it profitable anymore, it quits you.
Faster career growth takes place only with a change in outlook. Reasons you choose for a job change are crucial. Take time, don’t rush; base it on nurturing strengths and not weaknesses. It is like nurturing a plant in your backyard. You must sow the seed, plough the soil, and add manure to begin with. You have to add water every day and expose the plant to sunlight.
Fear often surfaces by restraining forces deep within us. Every person in this world has only one friend and one enemy – Mind. It is a paradox; how can our mind be friend and foe at the same time? Have a look;
And the list goes on... No one is perfect here. We are all travelers on the path; if the journey is perfect, the result will be perfect. The need is to plan and focus on the journey.
While taking a walk in the park, I look at every tree with awe, wondering at the power the seed brought with it to enable it to grow into a size that is beyond imagination. Similarly, both friend and foe mind sow the ‘seed’ every day; it is we who choose which ones to nurture. Once the seeds grow into a big redwood tree, it is nearly impossible to axe it, be it the tree of strength or weakness.
As a seed does not grow into a towering tree in a day, change in perspective doesn’t come easy, not least by reading an article or so. It is a persevering path. Nature puts perseverance to the test over and again. The meaning of the word perseverance is having undergone many ordeals and yet standing firm on the path.
Wise men suggest three ‘D’s help in the path of freedom:
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Discrimination
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Determination
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Detachment
Discrimination: To garner a shift in perspective, you should first start discriminating your seeds, the thoughts that you silently witness every day. Be analytical and spend some time with them and classify them in two buckets: seeds of strength and seeds of weakness.
Seeds of weakness make more noise than those of strength and gather much attention and votes by sounding incredibly practical in the present context.
You should be discriminative and act on the thoughts that give you strength alone. It is your destiny, not somebody else’s. You should decide what ‘promising’ future means for you and discriminate between what you would define as strength and weakness. Thoughts that prevent you from trying something new, that compel you to act considering your benefit alone by hook or crook sow the seeds of weakness. The thoughts you nourish today will either harness weakness or strengths that you will carry tomorrow, hence choose them carefully.
Determination: Score yourself on a scale of five; what do you find? Disallow gloom to descend on you if you fail to score five of five here. There are many other travelers on the path; you are not alone, if it offers little solace!
Determination is a character; you need it only when you are chasing a goal. No goal, no need for determination. Your thoughts and actions lay the foundation to build determination.
Nature reserves the toughest tests to test your determination. Tests become tougher with every test that you pass but remember it produces unparalleled results.
Ask someone who has just managed to walk the tightrope between two sky-scrapping buildings – why do you do this, bare-handed? Aren’t you afraid of death? A likely response would be – death if I fail! Years of practice go behind it, and for all you know it would have involved several failures.
‘Do for the heck of it’, attitude works. If you don’t understand or know how to fail, determination is built. Extraordinary feats come only with extraordinary efforts, and commitment to rise and walk again, no matter how many times you fall.
Detachment: The number of attempts you plan based on the result of the last trial will help you score yourself on detachment to results!
Analyzing what worked and what didn’t in last trial, and designing the next try based on it is one view, not making any further trials owing to last failure is another. Hopes dwindle and journey ends in latter case.
It has become our nature to look at failure alone, and not ‘what caused failure’.
When I set out from my house around 10:00 pm to buy something from a shop, foe mind reports, ‘the shops will be closed’. I ignore and go to the first shop if it is closed, to a second shop, if closed, to third… if time and energy allow. Usually, I succeed and sometimes I fail, but failure doesn’t stop me from trying when I am in need.
Why 10:00 pm? This is what I could afford! There is a need and I need to try my best in the given scenario. If I fail, I will come back and plan for tomorrow. Failure leads to judgment, judgment leads to condition, and condition brews attachment. It is a vicious circle.
Work done with attachment to its result brews error in the approach. Having a goal is different from attachment to an action’s result. Goal directs thought and act and result is an outcome of thought and act. Series of such results lead to achievement of final Goal.
We sow a seed in soil with a goal to see it flourish into flower and fruit bearing plant. If we uproot the seed every day, how is the goal to be achieved at all? When you drive back home from work, the goal is to reach home, but focus is on the road and travel, if we take our sight off the traffic flow we could meet with an accident, let alone reaching home safely. Do you ever get a doubt, whether you will reach home today or not, when you travel from office to home? That is all, focus on the journey you are bound to reach home in any case.
It is the journey that is important, not the destination.
To sum up, begin with a paradigm shift, a change in perspective. “Don’t look at your company for your survival; let the company look at you for its survival.”
About the Author
Sreedher Kadambi serves as the Principal Consultant and Managing Director at Skil Global Business Solutions Private Limited. With over two decades of experience, he specializes in consulting for Operations Excellence practices within the industry. Kadambi has collaborated with over 20 diverse business segments across India, the USA, and the Middle East, catering to small, medium, large-scale enterprises, as well as multinational companies. Additionally, he holds a position as a visiting faculty member at the Indian Institute of Management, Udaipur.
Kadambi has contributed to the field by authoring numerous articles and case studies focused on the implementation of world-class operational excellence practices, available, under blog section, on www.skilglobal.com. He is also the author of "Cracking the Six Sigma Black Belt Exam," a publication by McGraw Hill, which is currently out of print.