Have To or Want To - What’s your choice ??

Have To or Want To – what’s your choice ?

The reason why I chose this topic to write about over the weekend is that most often, we feel that we have to do so many things in life about which we don’t have a choice. On the other hand, we want to do so many things, but somehow cannot get enough time for them.

Have to indicates lack of choice, compulsion – almost as if something has been forced upon you. Even a sense of helplessness :(

Want to indicates desire, passion, willingness, energy :)

Simply put, have-to makes you unhappy (for most parts) and want-to makes you happy.

The key difference is our attitude and approach. Let’s take a few situations:

You have to pay your bills

You want to go to a movie.

You have to come to work.

You want to eat healthy and stay fit.

So, what’s your approach to life?

There will always be things which you have to do, but how you do them is what matters and how you convert the have-to to want-to over time matters more. More than conversion, I would say how you maintain the right balance between have-to and want-to

Let’s re-look at the above have-to situations again, trying to put the want-to spin on them.

You have to pay your bills – probably right, since you don’t have much choice and you don’t want to be chased down by the customer executives of the utility companies.

Re-frame : You want to pay your bills on time so that you can manage your finances better- sounds better and more positive – right? 

You have to come to work ( rings a bell ? ) .

Re-frame - You want to come to work since you enjoy your work and feel the workplace is providing you opportunities to grow, both professionally and personally.

Let’s examine this last one more carefully – I am sure most of us feel that we have to work? How many of us really want to work?

All of you must have heard of the adage – love what you do or do what you love. Sounds simple but difficult to get to that stage, especially if your work is not related to vocations such as art, music, sports.

So, what should you do?

Some simple mantras can help you a long way.

• Display a positive attitude at work. Think each day is going to be the best day at work and something good will happen.
• Be kind to others. Be ready to help. Show gratitude.
• Stop worrying what others are doing and where they are headed towards. You cannot control them. However, you can control what you deliver.
• You are there since you are the best. Give your best each day.
• Set your performance bar very high. Whether you are able to achieve it or not, that’s not so important. Key is what you are gunning for and are you giving it your best ?
• Learn something new each day – it could be a functional skill, a business idea or even a market trivia, but don’t go home without learning something new each day.
• Read industry-related news regularly – this helps you to know what’s happening in the outside world and can make some of the internal discussions very enriching or can trigger a new line of thought. Awareness can bring a lot of perspective to what you do and how you think.
• If something is bothering you on the personal front, take some time off or talk to your manager/teams about it to the extent possible – a negative frame of mind can do you (and your team) more harm than you can imagine. People notice. There is help available. Reach out.
• Pick up an area which interests you at work – something you feel passionate about, something you want drive and feel energized just by the talk about it. It could be anything ranging from process improvement to data analytic to training to affinity networks. If that area is a part of your current portfolio of work, then see how you can pick up a specific deliverable and allocate some mandatory time towards it. If it is not part of your regular routine, then make a pitch to your manager on how working in that area can help you and your team. Make a business case and don’t give up. Even if you are able to dedicate only a very small portion of your time to something you really want to drive, it will go a long way.
• Act as a change agent. Have a drive to change things around. Don’t accept status quo.
• Be bold and radical in your thoughts. Be different and positively disruptive. Don’t worry too much about what people will think. Bold thoughts make people uncomfortable in the beginning, but that’s a good sign.

So, how will all this change things?

For starters, a positive attitude at work will reflect in your ( and even your team’s ) performance. A kind, humane approach will ensure people are willing to work with you and you will in demand.

Giving your best shot everyday will ensure that you have a really good chance of success in whatever you deliver. The results of your best attempt can sometimes to astounding and will surprise you!

Doing something you really feel passionate about will bring in the best in you in terms of creativity, innovation and energy – that itself can be contagious and change the world around you positively.

Now all this does not mean that all of the work you do will become interesting overnight – make no mistakes, there will always be some part of your work which may seem mundane. How you bring change, how you balance it with your passion and how to bring others along can make a lot of difference. A mundane piece of task can be made more interesting by the approach of trying to change it for the better.

Think about you commute to/from work – you can’t avoid it, but you can utilize that time for a variety of things – strike a conversation with your fellow passengers, read a book, listen to music, take a nap - what you opt to do can make the commute more interesting and sometimes, you might be looking forward to it. I have personally made it a routine to read during my morning commute to work.

All the above is actually not difficult to achieve as most of the change is in the mindset, which is totally under our control. You can help yourself and others around you, if you make up your mind. The feeling of helplessness when it comes to have-to can be converted into the feeling of willingness (which comes from want-to) with a more positive approach towards life and work.

Have to or want to - in most of the cases, there is always a choice, an option. Question is whether you are willing to make the change? Have a think.

Now if you will excuse me, my wife is calling and I have to listen to her!