Own It...

As I was sitting in one of the sessions my boss was taking on leadership and motivation, my mind tumbled upon a few thoughts and after a very long time my pen yielded a few words on my perspective about life and how we live it in these demanding times, and how I believe we should live it. Seldom have we planned to succeed, most of the time we are busy thinking of scenarios we will fail in. we keep trying to find out ways to avoid those situation, rarely do we look t finding solutions to those hindrances. If at all we accept the uncertainty and prepare ourselves with an open mind and owe the responsibility of getting a task done, then we wouldn’t be deterred by any challenge. One of the weasy way to get out of such situations is to find loopholes in what depends on others, but the success isn’t met by walking on the easier path. You need to recognize the fact that trying to control scenarios and drive outcome would lead you to a path of uncertainty, instead if you try to control your own actions, thoughts and how you plan to drive yourself through times, then you would increase the probability of achieving the desired outcomes. You should work on expanding your sphere of influence, when you have the gift of influencing others, you don’t need to control them.

The only thing that we tend to get consistent with is digressing. Often it is taken as negative characteristics, but I ensure that I digress from my chain of thoughts so that I can explore even more ideas. But I try not to forget that I still need to control when I digress. It’s important to time your thoughts in a manner that you don’t lose your concentration on important things. After all we need to be aware enough to apply our views to situation and that will only happen when you have a rational and open minded approach to things. Challenge your mind to digress so that it is sound enough to challenge others minds as well. The strategy should be to be intelligent enough not to blindly questions others just for the sake of it but to analyze their point of view and understand it in a what to align it to the goals you have for yourself or collectively for the group. People say that trying alone is not enough, you need to perform but I suggest that trying isn’t that bad either to start with. Not get bogged down by the pressure of performance, try it out and see if you even intend to perform and in case you don’t, make it clear. You may suffer a bit, but that would solely depend on your choice of right and wrong and what you deem as valid for yourself.

At times it may happen that people would ask you to share your point of view and when you do so, they will try to convince you with theirs, It is your choice to accept their thoughts or make them understand yours, the key is to be assertive and not adamantly try to beat them down to agreeing your views. They eventually may agree to your stand but it is up to you to drive them to that stage. Through experience I have learnt or rather agreed to an adage “Silence in Golden”. It is in the best interest of the team to speak up and share your experiences but you need to be careful to assess if you are in a position to do so, to be confident about the fact that others are open to your thoughts and you yourself are not defensive towards those who challenge your thoughts.

A problem I face is that I am constantly thinking when someone else is sharing his thoughts, probably this is how I became addictive to my own opinions but I am surprised to see that I still have enough bandwidth to absorb what other have to say and try to align it to my views. I may accept or challenge them but I am glad enough to receive those views as they propel mine, they feed and provide manure to my stream of thoughts. We often ask others to speak up, promising not to be judgmental but we tend to fail to stick to our commitments. Be practical, assess the weight of what people say as most of the time you may encounter lost minds that merely tend to say something and do something else. I am not saying that everybody you come across will be opinionated, but you need to be careful to pick those who have a frank and honest opinion. I reiterate, don’t let this particular thought deter you when you approach any situation. The point is to be rational.

If given a chance to do something again, I am sure many of you would chose to do it differently in a different frame of time, the questions I why? The answer is simple, because you have thought of it a thousand times and come to an explanation why it didn’t work out the way you desired the first time itself. Maybe you do get a chance to do it again, hopefully you will succeed but what if you fail, would you find another explanation for your failure, if the answer is yes, then you need to do a bit of self analysis. Is it really worth to look for an excuse if we would still be looking for even more excuses? It’s good to analyze your mistakes and not to repeat them but it’s not worth it looking an excuse for your failure. If its tough for you it can be tough for others too. The challenge and oppurtunity is to Own it!

Mohit Chopra
mohitchopra1@gmail.com
7th Dec 2009