Don’t be a Victim of Success

Who doesn’t like the sweat taste of success? We all aspire for succeeding in different walks of life like studies, career, sports, family or social life. Every now and then, we come across a successful outcome. Success makes us happy, lifts our spirits, boosts our confidence in our abilities, and motivates us to go further. At times anticipation of success drives us to give our 100% to a task. 

You may ask, “If success does so much good to us, can we ever be a victim of our own success?” The answer is yes. There is a fine dividing line beyond which the positive motivation of achievement turns into a compelling obsession. When we cross this line, we become a victim of our own success. We end up in a relentless chase of success, which eludes us. At this point, accomplishment ceases to be a source of joy. I have experienced this phenomenon many times in my own case, and I shudder to think about the damage it did. I would strongly recommend everyone to avoid crossing this line consciously, and if it does happen inadvertently, pull yourself back as soon as possible to minimize its negative impact on you. Look for the following symptoms that are a sure sign that you are chasing success as a victim:

• You measure achievement by external factors such as approval of others, number of likes on social network, examination grades, medal in a competition, etc.
• You are so strongly focused on chasing publicly visible accomplishment, that you are in a hurry to go ‘public’ with your work, and do not take time to refine it to the required degree.
• You start trying quick-fix methods to win, giving up the step-by-step approach, since it is ‘too slow’.
• You stop enjoying the journey, with the complete focus on the destination. Particularly, watch if your language has more words about winning and fewer words about trying.

The most recent example of the harmful impact of this phenomenon is the case of current government, who seem to have become a victim of its unprecedented success in multiple elections, followed by many successful decisions like 370 removal, resolution of Ram Janmbhumi issue, etc. They are now trying hard to replicate this success in handling of the strong opposition to CAA - NRC. Only time will tell how they emerge from this situation.

We can take a lesson from Aam Aadmi Party as well; after its unprecedented success in 2013 Delhi assembly elections, we  saw the damage they did to their cause by committing mistakes after mistakes in a desperate bid to repeat their performance in 2014 general elections. Possibly AAP would have managed to win more seats had they contested the general election as a new party, not worrying about their past success. Only recently they realized the importance of dedicating their efforts towards improvements in Delhi, not worrying about other states.

Let me take a few more examples to illustrate this point further.

• Take the example of an athlete who wins a gold medal in her first appearance at Olympics. She wishes to repeat the debut success in the next games, but fails in the qualifying round. The desperation to win again does not help her at all. In the extreme case, this chase of past glory may force her to try out unfair means like drugs.
• When a student who has managed good grades in college approaches a real world job as another examination, it is not likely to work. He may try to apply his tried and tested approach even more vigorously to replicate his achievement. Again the desperation to succeed does not help him in his goal at all.
• Imagine a budding music band that enjoys their music and comes out with song compositions at times. One of their songs goes viral on social network and becomes very popular. They become so motivated with this unexpected success that they want to replicate and even surpass it. The problem starts when the band shifts its focus from enjoying music to producing another super hit that eludes them. They are desperate to come out with another hit, but it does not yield the desired result.

In short, when you let your glory of past and worry of future ruin the happiness of present, you are a victim of your success. Now that we know how to recognize it, what can we do to avoid it or to break free from the destructive pattern?  Here are some ideas that has worked for me. I hope you will also find some of these useful.

One more Chance

First of all, give yourself one more chance to try and win. Maybe your failure was a temporary thing and you are all set to succeed if you try once more. But do not invest too much emotional stake in the outcome. Be prepared to accept it calmly if it does not work.

Let go

Do not keep holding your past achievements tightly, let go of it. It is time to forget everything about your past glory and start afresh. Your past accomplishments should become just a pleasant memory and it should not continue to keep influencing your present. If things go well, maybe you can repeat it, maybe not. It really doesn’t matter in the long run.

Action not Outcome

Do not worry too much about the results and stop relying on external measure for your success. Devise your own internal yardstick to determine how well you have done. Above all, enjoy the action and the process of doing it. Do not kill the joy of today by worrying about the outcome of tomorrow.

Principle of Farm

Remember the principle that a farm needs careful cultivation before it yields a good crop. Similarly, there are no shortcuts in life. Any significant achievement needs lots of preparation and careful development. Therefore, give up the quick fix approach and opt for sustained effort. A sincere effort may not bring you instant success, but it will go a long way to move you  in the right direction. Look objectively to find out if you need to do something differently. Be patient and give it the time that it deserves.

These are a few suggestions I have. You may find that some of your own ideas work better in your case. The most important point I want to stress again is that we must be able to recognize when we have become a victim of our own success, and should do everything possible to pull out of the dangerous situation.

Fourteen Inspirational Stories

I recently came cross this collection of beautiful short stories each of which is worth reading, feeling and sharing with  others. The interesting part is that these while the stories are as small as a tweet, they still packs a strong punch of inspiration.

1. Fall and Rise

Today, when I slipped on the wet tile floor a boy in a wheelchair caught me before I slammed my head on the ground. He said, “Believe it or not, that’s almost exactly how I injured my back 3 years ago.

 2. A father's advice

Today, my father told me, “Just go for it and give it a try! You don’t have to be a professional to build a successful product. Amateurs started Google and Apple. Professionals built the Titanic

3. The power of uniqueness.

Today, I asked my mentor – a very successful business man in his 70’s – what his top 3 tips are for success. He smiled and said, “Read something no one else is reading, think something no one else is thinking, and do something no one else is doing.

4. Looking Back

Today, I interviewed my grandmother for part of a research paper I’m working on for my Psychology class. When I asked her to define success in her own words, she said, “Success is when you look back at your life and the memories make you smile.

5. Try and you shall know

I am blind by birth. When I was 8 years old, I wanted to play baseball. I asked my father, "Dad, can I play baseball?" He said, "You'll never know until you try." When I was a teenager, I asked him, "Dad Can I become a surgeon?". He replied, "Son, you'll never know until you try." Today I am a Surgeon, just because I tried!

6. Goodness and Gratitude

Today, after a 72 hour shift at the fire station, a woman ran up to me at the grocery store and gave me a hug. When I tensed up, she realized I didn’t recognize her. She let go with tears of joy in her eyes and the most sincere smile and said, “On 9-11-2001, you carried me out of the World Trade Center.”

7. Love Conquers Pain

Today, after I watched my dog get run over by a car, I sat on the side of the road holding him and crying. And just before he died, he licked the tears off my face.

8. A Door Closes to Open Another

Today at 7AM, I woke up feeling ill, but decided I needed the money, so I went into work. At 3 PM I got laid off. On my drive home I got a flat tire. When I went into the trunk for the spare, it was flat too. A man in a BMW pulled over, gave me a ride, we chatted, and then he offered me a job. I start tomorrow.

9. Looking Back

Today, as my father, three brothers, and two sisters stood around my mother’s hospital bed, my mother uttered her last coherent words before she died. She simply said, “I feel so loved right now. We should have gotten together like this more often.”

10. Affection

Today, I kissed my dad on the forehead as he passed away in a small hospital bed. About 5 seconds after he passed, I realized it was the first time I had given him a kiss since I was a little boy.

11. Innocence

Today, in the cutest voice, my 8-year-old daughter asked me to start recycling. I chuckled and asked, “Why?” She replied, “So you can help me save the planet.” I chuckled again and asked, “And why do you want to save the planet?” “Because that’s where I keep all my stuff,” she said.

12. Joy

Today, when I witnessed a 27-year-old breast cancer patient laughing hysterically at her 2-year-old daughter’s antics, I suddenly realized that I need to stop complaining about my life and start celebrating it again.

13. Kindness

Today, a boy in a wheelchair saw me desperately struggling on crutches with my broken leg and offered to carry my backpack and books for me. He helped me all the way across campus to my class and as he was leaving he said, “I hope you feel better soon.”.

14. Sharing

Today, I was traveling in Kenya and I met a refugee from Zimbabwe. He said he hadn’t eaten anything in over 3 days and looked extremely skinny and unhealthy. Then my friend offered him the rest of the sandwich he was eating. The first thing the man said was, “We can share it.”

---

About this Post

Thanks a lot Ashish Jain for sending the message that became the basis of this post.

The Reality of Gender Equality in India

Traditionally India has been a male dominated society. While male domination is giving way to gender equality in the rest of the world, how are we doing as a country in this direction? People of my generation will readily agree that we have made tremendous progress in last fifty years. We see Indian women actively making contribution in all walks of life, and standing up for their rights. We very often see many marriages among the people we know that display this healthy balance. No one can deny that we have improved a lot, but at the same time we need to do a lot more.

Let us do a reality check. Consider the following facts that stare us in the face even 60 years after independence:

• There is a serious move of making reservation for women in parliament as we have very few women in politics.
• Even in big cities, we see instances of girls giving up careers, their on-line presence, and friends after marriage. Boys do not have to do it.
• If we look at the data about the ratio of female and male children born in India in recent years, the trend becomes clear. On the average, for every 100 boys born in India, there are only 90 girls born! 
• Are some couples in India engaging in the banned practice of pre-natal sex selection to opt for a male child? Not sure about it, but the situation seems so grim that during election, Narendra Modi had to give a slogan, “Beti bachao beti padhao”.

It may be just the last mile in this long journey, but it the one that is turning out to be the most difficult. It may appear on the surface that urban people are already well educated not to have a gender bias, but it is not true really. The problem is as rampant in cities as in villages. What do we need to do to correct it?

As a first step, we need to fix our mindset, particularly starting with the urban educated people. An educated celebrity endorsing an outdated gender stereotype can do much more damage by granting validity to it. Let me take a couple of specific examples:

 

The Pop Singer

Last year, a popular singer made a controversial remark at the Mood Indigo festival of IIT Bombay. He asked the boys, "Are there good-looking girls in IIT-B?" While men raised their hands in solidarity to signal 'no', the singer went on to cheer the men up and said, "Don't worry guys, you will find the best looking women when you leave this campus. Aur woh tumhaare liye roti belengi (The women will make rotis for you)." Is he not spreading the stereotype that boys are supposed to make a career and girls are expected to cook?

 

The Youth Icon

Recently, a popular author who is known as a youth icon said in an article on the new government in India, "nayi bahu or nayi sarkar, doesn’t remain nayi forever. The honeymoon phase ends. After that, bahu or sarkar, has to manage not only actions but also expectations."

Again, it is a pity to see a sensible person like this author endorse and reinforce gender stereotypes prevalent in the society with such comments. If he had to take an example, why did he not choose ‘naya damaad’, or ‘saas’, or ‘pati’? Why only nayi bahu?  One may argue that it is a reality in India, not a stereotype as the bride is the one that usually has to move into another family and "adjust" to a new reality. With modern industrial economy, some boys may be living in a nuclear family away from home and parental units, but it is still statistically insignificant. 

While it is true that brides move to live with in-laws in many cases, it does not translate into all onus of fulfilling expectations on the bride. Should the bride who is leaving her parent's place not have any expectations from the in-laws and her husband? The damad may not live with in-laws, does that mean that in-laws cannot have any expectations from him?

The reality today is that the even if bride and her family may have expectations from her in laws and husband but relatively these are much less than what is expected form the bahu. Also the areas of responsibilities and duties of a bahu are much higher than a damaad resulting in higher expectations from her simply. Can we call it gender equality?

There lies the problem. The matter-of-fact mention of the need for the bahu to live up to the expectations of her in-laws, is not only a sexist mindset, but in the extreme case gives rise to harassment in sasural and dowry deaths. We need to change our own mindset before we can reform the reality.

In modern age when the entire world has woken up the notion of gender equality, everybody needs to get used to this concept, particularly young Indian girls and boys. However, it is sad to see gender discrimination still among people of generation Y. It is so hard to say when we will get there. The pace at which it is moving, it may take few generations for us to change that mindset. I believe women can help build the momentum by taking care of the following:

• Educate yourself as much as possible.
• Aim high and not limit your dreams.
• Make sure to build a career and have financial independence. 
• Do not see a contradiction between career and family. Learn to strike a good balance.
• Refuse to accept any discrimination against you.
• Take positive action to stop propagation of gender discrimination when you are in the role of a mother or mother-in-law.

We can see some shoots of positivity in this direction so hopefully sooner rather than later we are going to see a day when men and women are treated at par in our country. I eagerly look forward to the day. Maybe we get lucky and witness this vital change within our lifetime. Amen.

---

About This Post

Many people contributed ideas for this post. Thanks a lot Anuj bhai, Ishu, Vasu, and Mukesh for the engaging discussion and your valuable insights that gave shape to this post.

Ten Commandments for Staying Happy

One day passes without happiness and you lose one day. One day passes with happiness and you gain one day. Here is some useful and inspiring advice for staying happy. 

1. Spend the money that should be spent, enjoy what should be enjoyed, donate what you are able to donate, save the rest for future.
2. Don’t worry about what will happen after we are gone, because when we return to dust, we will feel nothing about praises or criticism. The time to enjoy worldly life and your hard-earned wealth will be over.
3. Care for your children, love them, and help them develop into good human beings. However, don’t worry excessively about them, for they will have their own destiny and will find their own way. 
4. Enjoy your money while you can. Life should have more to it than working from cradle to grave. 
5. No amount of money may buy you the lost health, so don’t trade in health for wealth by working tirelessly to an early grave.
6. Keep asking yourself, “When should I stop making money? How much is enough?” At the end, you can eat only three meals a day and need eight square meters of space to rest at night. When your savings are enough to meet your future needs, its time to take the plunge.
7. In a good spirit, sickness will cure. In a happy spirit, sickness will cure more rapidly. In high and happy spirits, sickness will never come. Above all, learn to cherish the goodness around and friends. They all make you feel young and wanted.
8. Stress means gap between expectations and reality. More the gap, more the stress. Expect nothing and accept everything. Don’t believe in the ‘tit for tat’ rule, because we can’t bite a dog who has bitten us, so don’t spoil your level to get even with others.
9. Learn to let go, because you can't have the next breath until you let go the existing one.

What is All This Stuff about Expectations?

Recently I came across the following post on Facebook:

Expect nothing from others and you'll never be disappointed.
Truth of my life - I stay happy as I never expect anything from others.

This post triggered interesting thoughts and discussion. There is a lot of truth in it. All of us are familiar with the shattering feelings of pain when someone close to us ditches our hopes. Many relationships break down due to belied expectations. Hence it is not unreasonable to connect expectations with disappointments and failed relationships. We may say that relationship without expectations is likely to last longer.

 
However, there is another side of this picture as well. Let us not forget the immense satisfaction we get when a loved one meets our anticipation. Close relationships are built on the foundation of interdependence, a beautiful way of life allowing us to have expectations from each other and fulfill them. Hence, expectations are part of relationships and if they are reasonable, they are good. Without exciting things to look forward to, a relationship may last longer but won't be strong or close.
 
So, should we take the risk and have expectations to spice up our relationship or should we play it safe with a no expectations policy to avoid heartbreaks? Is there a way we can have both – enjoy the tadka of anticipation in our close relationship without the accompanying risk? I don’t know the answer myself, but let me try to collect some ideas in this post in search of an answer. 
 
If we look back at our close relationships, we have come across many happy instances of people delighting us by fulfilling or even exceeding expectations, as well as bitter memories of people not meeting our expectations. Let me try to analyze these two cases separately. I will take the happy case first and try to recall the situations when my expectations were met. Every situation may be unique but I notice the following common pattern in all these instances:

1. The person cared enough about me.
2. He was aware of the fact that I expected something.
3. We worked together to make him understand clearly what was expected from him and agreed upon it.
4. He was capable of doing it if he made a reasonable attempt.
5. If the result fell short of my expectations in-spite of the efforts, I appreciated his efforts and accepted the outcome. If necessary, I encouraged him to attempt again and stayed patient. 

Now let me take the bitter case, when the belied expectations have hurt my feelings and try to find the common reasons behind it: 

1.    Closet Expectations

Very often, I did not tell the other person that I am anticipating something from him. This seems to me that the most common reason behind belied expectations. It is so simple yet so elusive. I expected a close one to read my mind or body language and did not tell him directly what I wanted. Now that I know this, I can fix it by communicating my expectation to others and not keeping it a secret. 

2.    Unclear Expectations

In some cases, I conveyed my anticipation in somewhat vague terms. Hence the other person did not have a clear understanding of what I expected. Here again I made assumptions that he had an implicit understanding of what I wanted, so I did not take pain to communicate and clarify expectations.
In a close relationship, it is helpful to clarify expectations regularly, and it also makes the relationship stronger. Hence, the key to fix this factor is in my hands as well. 

3.    Unreasonable Expectations

In a few instances, I expected too much from a close one, which was either not possible for him to meet, or not reasonable for me to expect. A close relationship is not a license for me to impose my whims and fancies on the other person. I need to have a healthy respect for him, and when I violate this rule, I am asking for heartache.

4.    Lack of Acceptance

At times, I was in situations when the other person tried his best but failed to come up to my expectations. There should not be any emotion involved here, but I made it an emotionally charged issue by not accepting the situation.  

5.    Surge of Emotions

In all the above cases, I tied up my happiness to this expectation, and hence I felt a surge of bitter emotions – disappointment, hatred, anger that made me unhappy. It is this factor that makes it risky to have expectations. If only I can learn to detach my happiness from the outcome, a failed expectation will no longer be a shattering experience for me. In other words, I would have learned how to handle the downside. Is it easy to separate out emotions? Definitely not, but given the benefits, it is worth to try it out. 
 
Going through this analysis has clarified my thinking, and the following picture seems to be emerging for effective handling of expectations:

• Reduce the risk. Never attach a high emotional stake to an expectation. Resolve to be happy irrespective of the outcome.
• Work with the other person positively towards success – communicate and clarify your expectations, help him in his efforts. Accept him and be patient if he falls short.  

And here is how it fits on the two sides of the picture we talked about earlier: 

Side A

It is best to do away with expectations with high emotional stake attached to them (a demand) as it can have a destructive impact. A relationship is likely to last longer without such demands. 

Side B

Expecting and Accepting are part of a healthy relationship. When high emotional stakes are taken out, a close relationship can get better with proper play of expectations. Not all expectations have to be met. So long as our expectations do not become demands, and we know how to deal with the failed ones, it works out fine.

Armed with this knowledge, from now on I am going to try “safe expectations” in my close relationships and hope I would never have to use the following lines with a close one :)
 

 न मै तुमसे कोइ उम्मीद रखूँ दिलनवाज़ी की,   न तुम मेरी तरफ देखो गलत अन्दाज़ नज़रो से

---

About This Post

• From this discussion, it should be clear that managing expectations plays a major role in a close relationship. So, if you are on the other side, make every effort to uncover, clarify, and understand the expectations that the other person has from you. Do not shy away from making promises and take your promises seriously and keep your word at all costs. This is a sure fire way to build up your emotional bank account reserves.
• रिश्तों की चाय में शक्कर ज़रा माप के ही रखना! फीकी हुई तो स्वाद नही आएगा और ज्यादा मीठी हुई तो मन भर जाएगा