Don’t get too caught up in making money or having a job, get excited about the fact that you can design your life. - Darren L. Johnson (American Author) Everything in this world is there for a purpose. To find the purpose is the most difficult task. Once you find it, then your life is on overdrive on a smooth highway. So if PURPOSE is really such an important thing why are they not teaching it at school or college or work or during parenting? Why is this not thought anywhere is because the path and the curiosity are very customised to the person in question. It is the self who needs to ask and do the search, the coach or the acharya (in the Indian tradition) will only facilitate the search journey. They too do not have a readymade answer In the present age where failure is not an option, always seen as a weakness and everything is fast 'n' furious there is no pit stop for you to sit back and think. Many compare this with the life of an ant or a worker bee. Ants and bee do not have what we have - the thought power, I am not saying to abruptly stop what you are doing and just sit still and start pondering. When I said in the first line, everything in this universe has a purpose, then with thought power inside of us it is our prime duty to try and find it. Yes, finding the flower which has nectar is tough for the worker bee but it trains itself to find it. If it can then why not us? What's wrong with the way it is now, you may ask. Some of them live their entire lives trying to figure out the purpose of their existence. Some people fail, and some people succeed. And then there are those people who know their purpose, but still, they get diverted from them. So how does it matter to us on finding this purpose? When you know the purpose of your life, you tend to live a more meaningful existence than those who don’t. You tend to live each day to the fullest because you know who you are, where you’re coming from, and where you’re going. Imagine that Arjuna had to go through 18 chapters and 700 Shlokas just to find this answer that too in the middle of a historic war. Right, in contrast, this is available for you at the touch of a finger sitting on your favorite sofa. To find this rather elusive all important data (purpose in life) also we need to set a goal. So goal setting is actually the most important thing for your success. Goal setting is fundamental to any type of achievement. If you want to live a life of purpose, setting goals will increase your odds of reaching your desired outcome.
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If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it Albert Einstein These words are wise and for a sound reason. However, most of the organisation do not seem to heed them when faced with a crisis in hand. Indeed, when developing new products, processes, or even businesses, most companies aren’t sufficiently rigorous in defining the problems they’re attempting to solve and articulating why those issues are important. There is always a rush to solve the problem and I think the education system has to be blamed. The moment the exam paper is handed over, all of us scramble to the solution - never are students encouraged to study the problem and then attack the solution. The solution is what mattes, never to understand the question. If we do not correct this at the beginning how can we expect to correct it when all of them are in leadership roles? Without that rigor, organizations miss opportunities, waste resources, and end up pursuing innovation initiatives that aren’t aligned with their strategies. Many a time's leaders have realised late in the game that they may not be tackling the right issues. Let us take this example (made-up) Leader: "Why do you need that lubricant?" Engineer: "We need this lubricant since the machine gets hot before the product completion" Leader: "Why don't you get machinery that doesn't heat up?" Engineer: "No one makes a machine which is an exact fit for us" This raises a deeper question: Does this company need the lubricant, or does it need a new way to make its product? The example is like many we would have seen in our combined experience: Someone lowest of the organization hierarchy is assigned to fix a very specific, near-term problem. But because the firm doesn’t employ a rigorous process for understanding the dimensions of the problem, leaders miss an opportunity to address underlying strategic issues. There are two sides to a problem, giving information, and receiving information. Initially, I faced a lot of issues with my team, I used to start with "WHAT I WANT" and ended up with lengthy meetings with a convoluted ball of scenarios and suggestions - all unclear. When I went to my mentor for short conservation about this issue, he instructed me to rephrase the moot question and asked me to start with the "WHY I WANT TO SOLVE THIS". It is universally understood that "WHAT" creates a defensive team and "WHY" creates a bonding team. |
AuthorVasudevan is a Leadership Mentor and an Executive coach. I run an online website geared towards helping creative entrepreneurs and future managers to build their dreams. Archives
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