My motivators...

In my last post, I talked about motivation and how I managed with a little of that, which ended me up in creating a website and through that an exciting career move. Ok, let's be practical; creating a website doesn't have much to do with as big as a career move, but in my case it was just incidental. So, don’t get carried away too much by what I just said!

My wife reads all my posts to this blog, and likewise read this one too. It led us to a big discussion, the essence of which was how and from where all of us manage to get our motivation. It made both of us to think aloud for about an hour, and at the end I felt good as if I had discovered myself! I would like to share some of those thoughts with you...

For those who know close enough from my childhood (there aren't many of them) or those who've read my auto-biographical notes (and this one too) in my website would identify me as one of the most confused, scared and diffident child they might've ever met. The most fundamental trait of me is that of being sensitive, actually hyper-sensitive (if there exists a word like that!). There was a time of my life, when I was an absolute introvert. I was easily overwhelmed with grief and guilt, when I wasn’t able to do something that somebody else expected me to, whoever it may be. All this only aggravated my condition and caused me to struggle a lot in life, and hence I deliberately wanted to change sometime down. Hard experiences of life taught me not to be what I had been, but at least try and create a defense mechanism to protect me from all these ‘self-allegations’.

I tried hard, but didn’t get much success out of my efforts. But, during the latter part of my professional career, I started to realize that my personality changed a very lot from every possible angle – and to my surprise, I realized that lot of that had happened even without my knowledge. These shifts in viewpoints and personality traits didn’t happen overnight, but over the years, kick-started probably after my college days, but lot of that still remains etched in my mind somewhere. I basically am all the above even today.

Those are the basic building blocks of my life. If I declare that these very things that I so desperately wanted to change in me were the very reasons for my motivation, aren’t you surprised? I bet you are. It surprised me as well initially, but thinking over it again and again, I found that it is true!

Let’s take striking examples. I strive to be always perfect over whatever I do, be it in personal and in professional life. To a large extent, I owe this habit to my father who is a perfectionist. But, I perfected this art over the years and learnt to be punctual, issueless regarding all aspects of life. I didn’t attain this magically. The simple reason is, I am very afraid of criticism! Sometimes, I even have nightmares of people blaming me for not having done something they wanted me to.

I try my best to be pro-active and follow up all that work that people want get done from me. Sometimes, I succeed and other times I get brick-bats. But, when the latter happens, I don’t get overwhelmed with grief as I used to once. Of course, I do get saddened, but I can’t afford to let that overcome me for long. Why and how did I achieve this? Nothing great have I done. Because of the simple reason that my past experiences tell me that, if I remain overwhelmed with grief over something that happened in the past, I will lose my time on my next assignment. It killed me several times in the past, which in turn led to more sorrowful incidents. I was just afraid of all this. I couldn’t stand people looking at me strangely, when something is not properly done from my side. I can’t help imagining all sorts of things people have in mind about me. I want all people to talk only great things about me! I break-down otherwise.

Peer pressure is something that is invisible, but drives you nuts. A similar one, is that of societal pressure – both of these are not probably that prominent in the western countries, but not so in India. From the day one at school, you are being compared to your friends – comparisons at schools, whether it is with respect to studies, or any extra curricular activities. Competition is so intense in Indian scenario in every walk of life, that it is impossible for any Indian child to left untouched by it. Moreover, the Indian society gives respect to such people who are competitive, and are achievers. People are often judged by designations, rather than the pure ability to achieve. As a simple example, a person designated as a manager is respected more than anybody else, even if he is extremely knowledgeable and skilled to do what he is working on – irrespective of whether the former is too dumb to know anything about what he is doing (and most probably it is!)

Over the years, I learnt many new technologies that is unusual to expect from an average guy that I was. Again, I didn’t achieve this magically. I was afraid of being left out all alone, among my colleagues who may learn all these and get past me someday. When I was a kid, my elder sister was always better than me in every single respect and used to take away all praises from my parents. I used to end up a laughing stock in our family. This tired me no end. This experience from my childhood days still haunt me, and hence can’t imagine being left behind in anything, be at the professional or the personal front. It urges me to learn more and be in the forefront.

In short, I am what I am today, only because of my limitations. Luckily for me, all of that ended up doing me good. Even if I am aware of all this, I don’t want to change – the truth is, I can’t change – because it has done so much good to my life.

So, my conclusion from all this is that one’s limitations (whether physical/psychological) can be the best motivators in his/her life. Don’t try to underplay or outsmart your limitations; if you try to, you will thrown out of the rails of life. Go along the tunnel, even if it’s pitch dark, and someday you will find the gleaming bright light at the end of the it…