Close your eyes for a minute. Imagine or say aloud the word “Success.” How does that make you feel? In a normal world, it should have made you feel good. But do you know that this is the main reason for people to feel stressed out day in and day out in their job? Sad, but that is the truth.
Even if one’s job is to pet the cute dogs, while eating ice cream getting a massage, they still feel work-related stress. The need to be better at their job and outsmarting everyone of their colleagues seem to be the mantra. When my friends who work in a corporate environment tell me that they are stressed for the most of their work-life, I wonder if their work is that stressful rather than a surgeon who performs back to back surgeries. But when I asked questions and volunteered to listen, I understood not only most of my friends but most of the employees in the corporate job are very skilled at what they do and they are constantly updating themselves.
So why are they stressing? Mostly it was because of what other people say or might say about them. The second one was their fear of achieving success a bit late. In other words, what if somebody does this before me? I would go unnoticed.
I really can’t understand this.
But I can understand that to finish the tasks at hand and answer a couple of emails from superiors without delay, we gave up the ability to be aware. I am not talking about some spiritual stuff. Being self-employed lets me concentrate on a few important things, which I feel applies to anyone. My skillset will be able to help someone with their problem and I get paid to solve the problem. A lot of people are hired for the same reason. But the culture of the company makes sure that they concentrate on everything else than what they are paid for hence resulting in frustration for both the parties.
Also with our quest to become successful, most of us don’t define what success means to us. Naturally, when we are not aware of our definition of success we give in to the downright stupid definition of others. This causes friction between what we love to do and what we want to achieve. In doing so we take on the battles which we might have left alone if we had a choice. It is truly sad when we see people fresh out of college burned out because they had to submit 20 articles about how almond milk is a better substitute for dairy and not enjoy what they do in the process.
We somehow convinced ourselves that the fruit of the labor is at the end of the workday/week/month. We failed to enjoy the daily process of putting our head down, rolling up our sleeves and getting things done. Consequently, we carry the workload and stress to home and spread it to everyone who chances upon us.
There is a simple way.
In the risk of sounding like a privileged member of the society, I urge you to look into you on what is the problem you are solving with your skillset and spend more time in doing that, rather than satisfying the ego of managers or chasing quick promotions. It may take a while, but the success will follow. In the meantime, learn to enjoy the daily work and make it better every day. This is just like saying, hit the gym every day and you will get an envious body. It may sound easy to read. But very difficult to enjoy our daily job and honing the skills.
May you succeed in all your ventures and importantly by your own terms and definitions.
