Jobseeker Columnist (April 2009)
Succeeding in a Crowded World.
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In a world today where there are too many people, too many opportunities and too much distraction, how do we succeed? There’s so much work, too much TV, too many “teh tarik” friends. There are opportunities at every turn, yet we do not seize them. There’s too much fear, too much anxiety, too much uncertainty. |
So how do we succeed in a crowded world? Where overflow of information threatens to overwhelm us? Where social demands and expectations asks for us to remain mediocre, never to rise above the crowd. Simple, we need to start caring for the things that matters.
So what matters?
Last week, I was beside the bed of a dying man. He was 63 and he has lived a long fulfilling life. He was a student councilor in his day and has helped countless students in their times of hardship. I asked him if there was any advice that he could give to the next generation and he said, “Live life”. That was all. “Live life”. There’s this saying that goes, “If we are unafraid of death, we will be unafraid to live”. For a man that is facing death and has come to peace with it, this statement makes a lot of sense.
To succeed in a crowded world, we need to spend the time we have on the things that matters. The time we have is like an hourglass, with its’ bottom chopped off. The sand representing our time on earth, pouring away, never to be recovered.
So what matters?
I can start with things that don’t really matter. Television doesn’t matter, The biggest media junkies in Asia can be found in Malaysia (12.9 hours a day, all forms of media, source: Synovate). The bad economy doesn’t matter, there are lots of winners in this depressed economy, and the key is to position you as one of them. An unchallenging, unfulfilling job doesn’t matter; by the time we blink twice, we are old and looking back at what could have been.
So what matters?
Spending time to find our purpose and passion matters, because spending our time in pursuit of something worthwhile will define our lives and give us meaning, get us through the tough times and will be a great story for our grandkids to look up to.
Which reminds me of a quote by Austrain neurologist and psychiatrist, Victor Frankl:
‘Everyone has his own specific vocation in life… Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”
Cultivating a learning habit matters, because we build our lives while standing on the shoulders of our forefathers. Mistakes have been made, successes have been felt. When we learn from the experience of others, we become smarter and our fear disappears because we know exactly what to expect and we can better predict the effect of our life decisions.
A good example is starting a business, most people are too fearful. In fact, only 5 percent of people will ever start a business. If we knew we could not fail, wouldn’t we all start our own businesses? Well, learning from others will help us find a degree of certainty. Most people also fall into the trap of starting a business that is not part of their passion or purpose. When we do something that we are not passionate about, the first road block would cause us to turn the other direction.
Which brings us to what filmmaker George Lucas said about finding the passion: “You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles, and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you? If you don’t have that kind of feeling for what it is you’re doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle.”
So spend some time in search for the meaning of you, and work harder on yourself than on your job, because then you will position yourself to succeed in a crowded world. All the best.
Edmond is a qualified civil engineer who has been working in the engineering field for 5 years. Switching career in motivational speaking and training, he was the performance consultant at the Malaysian chapter of Dale Carnegie Training. His love of motivating and inspiring people prompted him to start up Education Republic with a few others.
He can be reached at edmond@edurepublic.com
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(Source: Jobsdb Malaysia)
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