The 1 2 3 of life

As we lead our life, we often get struck, what was working earlier no longer works, as we grow, we feel alienated or world not recognizing the heroics of us. The fact is we make things, to large extent we are responsible for how the world sees us.

There are 3 things we need to think of:

1. Things that we want to do, but never start - Inertia.
2. Things that we are good at, but no discipline to better leading into imperfection
3. Things that we may need to stop, but won't do.

Let me explain this with a smoothie jar, the jar before blending looks like what feel we are!.

The Jar here has so many wonderful ingredients that, we got plums, mango, banana, apple and some greens. This represents static view of how each one of us are made up of. We got wonderful ingredients in us. we got skills, we are smart, we want to help customers, improve product, we want to grow up in the ladder.

The world sees us different, it sees all green, where is the mango, where is my plum or banana? It looks so green.

The people we closely work with sees the taste of it, such a wonderful, organic , freshly made smoothie makes a wonderful start for the day.

We often get lost in, what we are really are, what we perceive ourselves, what the world around us sees us and what the immediate friends/colleagues value us.

Let's look at the first jar, it doesn't look full, may be we need few more things and fill it in. The question is do we really need? Do we need to fill the jar? Are we not good and wonderful enough with what we are. If we really fill the jar, the blending will be difficult, you are going to cause overflow. Things in their raw form are more dense, coarse. The processed and fine tuned are more functional but not as dense as it was in raw form but better functional and useful.

Often we long for things that we do not have and miss what we are blessed with? worried about that promotion or pay check and then care less to your wonderful family? is that fair? Often we do not know what is on the other side of the fence and think we be there and keep regretting for not being there. Not fair, we are being very rude to ourselves.

We need to get back to some basics:

• Be nice to ourselves.
• Cherish what we have
• Value our relationships, friends, colleagues, customers

Things we need to practice

The 1,2,3 of the life

• Get out of the inertia zone, start doing what you want to do. Take help from family or friends. Do you want to have a morning walk? ask your spouse to join you or get a pet, make yourself a favor by getting bit uncomfortable to wake up early. Too much of comfort zone is not good.
• Exploit your core skills. Are you good at design? or negotiations or managing teams or being an individual champion? go for it. If you want the world to define what you are, you are asking for trouble. You need to find your rhythm. How do you do it? Introspection, get coaching, take help from your family, friends or colleagues, discuss with your boss etc. Key thing is it need to originate from you.
• Reduce doing things that are hurting you or people around you. See the blended jar, the greens are dominating, let's say you are honest and direct and feel you you are doing everything right. What if the other person is lazy and want to stay in their comfort zone, by expecting them to do something different than what they want to be, you do not need to overdo your thing. You need to handle differently or better leave it as they are. You need to know what you can change and what you can not, what you are not supposed to change (just that its not your job).