Inertia – the route to killing self
I am tempted to quote verbatim the comments made by one of my blog readers
“Plans are nice to read, but difficult to get done. World is not so smooth place to live-in; external factors are always there to crumble your internal wishes! Particularly in this materialistic world, financial hurdles don’t allow common people (like me) to achieve our dreams. One may say, we have no guts to achieve what we dream. But at the end of the day, when I think of spending sometime in blogging or reading an interesting book a sense of job insecurity creeps into my mind spoiling all other interest” .
Death of human physical being is certain. It has its fixed time, place and the manner. It can come through accident, disease, destruction and even destiny. But many a times we tend to invite an untimely blow of sudden death to our souls and inner selves. That happens when we stop growing instead we start the downward spiral of mental de- growth. We lose not only interest in every thing around us but we also end up distancing ourselves from our desired for and intended goals in our life. This may happen because we have lost interest in surroundings around us or it may happen since we are tempted to opt for the security of our cushy jobs and the perks attached to it. But the worst situation comes when we do no take any initiative because of the fear of the unknown. A look at the reasons for inactivity and its systems will help here to understand our very own personalities and the gimmicks we indulge into to accept the death of intellect for future growth.
Our inertia causes downward growth when we:
- Leave decisions of our life to others
- Always complain about the lack of time
- Always complain about lack of resources
- Always complain about lack of opportunities
- Get irritated for non achievements
- Can not find any topic of interest to discuss with friends/ family
- Simply talk of doing great things
- Sleep either more or less than necessary
- Avoid career discussions
The way to self realization is replete with many challenges and rewards. Challenges to understand and synergize our strengths and weakness to either thwart the threats and or also to en-cash and en-value the opportunities. This can come only when we make all efforts to take out some time for our own self development.
I am reminded of the famous words of Dov Frohman when he says “every leader should routinely keep a substantial portion of his or her time—I would say as much as 50 percent—unscheduled. … Only when you have substantial ’slop’ in your schedule—unscheduled time—will you have the space to reflect on what you are doing, learn from experience, and recover from your inevitable mistakes. Leaders without such free time end up tackling issues only when there is an immediate or visible problem”.
We get stuck up in the rut of ordinary routine when we refuse to take out time for ourselves. We must take out time to reflect and think as to which way we can improve our lives, our mental ability, our leadership qualities, our positive yet differentiating strengths to keep us ahead from the others in the race to self realization. Every day at the end of the day we must reflect as to what happened during the course of the day. We must examine in the process whether the experience has been a positive gain or a negative abrasion. Such critical analysis of experiencing will make us imbibe the positive within us for future enjoyments and the negatives will either be left behind or accumulated for future corrections.
Only a very conscious effort made to learn from our experiences and mistakes can open the path to the progress and make us effective leaders. Let us begin this today itself by asking ourselves very basic and simple questions:
- What was my today intended for?
- Did I do what I had planned?
- Did I achieve what was I trying to achieve?
- What had contributed to this achievement?
- What could I not achieve and why?
- Is the non achievement any way affecting my life’s long term plans?
- In what way is my non achievement affecting others?
- What can be the long term / short term affects (positive or negative) for me and others?
- Can I do the same thing differently next time?
- Can I do any thing to improve upon whatever I did today?
- Can I make my family, colleagues, co-workers, friends, partners in this route to improvement?
Our introspective reflections will bring forth the positive thoughts amongst others too, whose opinions do count for us and who can be instrumentals/ motivators in helping us get up and get going in a more constructive approach for future accomplishment.
Alka Mansik Pramarsh Foundation Clinical Psychologists-Family therapists Indore 0731-4263087,9179383554 