The urge to make a big difference
There are many people who always think they can do something about their lives, big or small. There there many others who simply say "it is always my fate", literally shutting the door to any suggestion.
The latter group of people have to be reminded that most of what we make of our lives, is largely within us. Of course in God, and doing all that one is bound to do, in terms of religious practices is always a good thing. However, in the absence of planning, effort and hard work, even God cannot help any human being.
The famous director of Tamil film music, A R Rahman, has won several international awards for this work. He is now a global music director, as he does music in many languages. However, many do not know that he is one of the most hard working persons of his tribe. His entire creativity, his innovative tunes and what he calls as "fusion music", comes out of several hours of terrible hard work, up to eighteen or even more hours per day.
Similarly, what the famous actor Rajnikant has achieved, can be attributed to hard work, of a tall order.
So, the power to change ourselves, that particular urge to excel, is part of ourselves. It is within us, a deeply embedded thought that needs to be ignited. Only consistent, planned work, can help achieve success.
Most business people are endowed with this terrible knack of getting the best of people, and scarce resources, in any given situation. The plan to do the best and can be seen doing a lot of hard work, to execute their plans. They even work on Sundays, and work is worship for them.
It is always wise to learn from such wonderful people.
The first is self-belief, and the innate need to love oneself. If we do not think highly of ourselves, who else will? If we do not love ourselves, who else will? This may seem like sheer common sense but it is not. This common sense eludes us, and we fall into the trap of negative thoughts about ourselves.
The second most important learning is that we need detailed plans for each of our ambitions or goals and objectives. For example, the moment one joins a college as a teacher, the first and most important plan that he needs to execute, is a plan to complete the doctorate degree.. This is an absolute necessity. Unless one has a doctorate, he or she cannot succeed at all, in the teaching profession.
It is not only that a doctorate is required, a big focus on research is required as well. If the teacher manages to get his or her research papers published in a reputed international journal on merit, he or she can rest assured that the whole world will open up, for a highly lucrative career.
The teacher then has to graduate towards writing books, and coming out with original thoughts on how to make the life of students, very interesting, how he or she can do value addition in terms of teaching and so on.
It should be appreciated that value addition can happen only if the urge to excel is there. Otherwise, like most other teachers, he or she will simply fall into the activity trap and not realize his or her ambition at all.
The urge to make a big difference is a must in all of us. We should never be satisfied with the status quo. If we do so, we are just fooling ourselves, we are missing all that is good about ourselves, we are not using our strengths at all.
Planning alone will not help. Execution is as important as planning. For example, many good teachers do spend their long journey hours in trains or buses, reading a book or two. This helps them to save time. They can jolly well go to sleep as well, which is a good alternative. But this alternative, it should be noted, does not yield any result.
Once the plan is executed, we also need to analyse if everything went according to plan. If we notice gaps, we should take corrective action, learn from mistakes, and ensure that mistakes are not repeated.
Documentation of experiences is also important. The human mind is very nimble in nature. We tend to forget what we had for breakfast, today, if we are questioned tomorrow. This being human nature, we need to find out ways and means to ensure that meaningful documentation of our experiences is not only done, but also the learning is highlighted for our future use and action.
We can take conscious steps, we can also make a big difference. We have within us. We have it in a big way. All that we need to do, is to explore our inner selves and take appropriate action. We can indeed make a big difference, by developing an urge to excel, at any point in time.
Like it on Facebook, Tweet it or share this article on other bookmarking websites.