The Marsh Is Pulling You Down!
Do you ever go through a phase
where you feel “I want to do that but I don’t get time” Or perhaps “I took this
path so that I could reach there but somehow I feel lost now” or maybe sometime
it even says “If only I did not have to slog for so many hours in my current
job, I could fetch time out to pursue things that I really wanted to work for
me or those That I am really good at”
Many of us are into jobs that we
do because we need money, have families to run, are the sole bread runners or
simply doing because we have to. But I know a vast majority from this lot who
have dreams of their own. Someone wants to open a restaurant; someone wishes to
write a book; some wish to have their paintings displayed in the best art
gallery and then there are some who would have been in a rock band. Yet for
most of them this is still a dream that they had been carrying on for so long
but still a dream…
I’ve also met some people who say
“I’m a lot more clear about what I want. I’ll be in IT for a couple of years,
make some money, travel some countries through an onsite assignment making more
money and finally open a small café or restaurant somewhere.”
But when I meet them years after
such a conversation, they are still doing what they were doing. The dream of
that restaurant is there but is still the dream that is a couple of years away.
That difference of number of years between ‘now’ and ‘dream realization’ never
reduces.
And before I risk myself being
tagged a snob who will be bombarded with questions on my own credibility, I will
accept my own flaws as a human. I had my own set of dreams and I kept pushing
them for quite a while and sometime I still do but during one of the urges to achieve
my dreams, I realized my enemy! And I am sure the enemy for most of us is one –
Lack
of Focus!
We have loads of dreams but we
fail to convert them into our goals. Even if some of us take an extra effort
and make our dreams our goals, we lose the battle half way by lack of consistent
effort.
Over years, I realized that for all goals that
I did not achieve in my planned time, I lost motivation on the way. Most long
term goals die their natural death because we do not put in enough effort
consistently- the effort that is required to make that dream a reality! And it
all comes down because somewhere we lose focus.
It is when we lose focus that the
environment starts to play the devil. It is our dedication and focus that will
decide whether environment is more powerful than us or vice versa.
Let me take an example that I
want to be a writer, which is my dream but I also work as a trainer, which in
this case will become my environment. To fulfil my dreams, I start writing some
small pieces but on the way if I lose focus, then I get absorbed into my
environment. I will start to train more and do all work that relates to my
current profession. Once my focus has shifted
from my dream to my environment, I would slowly give in less and less time to
my dream realization. Oh yes! For all those observant epitomes of intelligence,
I know you would say that even when I’m focussing on profession; it is still
all about “focus”. But my dear friends, what I’m talking about here is the
focus for dream realization. So, because my focus has now drifted away from my
dream realization, I end up not achieving the dream in stipulated time frame
and being humans, we end up finding the easiest way to get rid of guilt of not
achieving – The blame game.
It will be extremely easy for me
to say and convince my own self that “I do not get time to work on my dreams;
My profession demands so much that I can hardly focus on my dreams; If only I
could put in lesser hours at work, I would get some time to do what I really want
to do”
The environment wins the round 1
but even then your dreams do not die. All your mind does is just give it a back
seat. Then a couple of weeks or months later, the dream will come to the
forefront, you will do some small thing about it but again the focus is lost
and the cycle continues. Over a period of time, this process leads to frustration
and uneasiness. The uneasiness of ‘not being able to do what you want to do’
converts to the frustration of ‘being made to do what you don’t want to do’ and
most of us start hating our jobs.
But again in this case, who do we
blame? – our environment – our jobs, our organizations, our managers. I call
this environment as “The Marsh”.
Not once do we realize or even if
we do realize we just don’t want to accept that why we are being pulled inside
the marsh is not purely because the marsh is stronger but because we were weak,
because we lost focus on the way.
The marsh always tends to become stronger
than you and it will always try to pull you down into it soaking you completely.
It is in your hands whether you want to be drowned and dead or you want to take
charge and pull yourself out.
So if you have a dream and you
want it to be a reality, Take Charge, Be Focussed.
Remember, for every passing
minute where you are being de focussed, The
Marsh Is Pulling You Down!
