Building a Life or Career Path

Easier said then done because once you enter the corporate world its like being a hamster on the wheel and your speed is determined by the speed of the wheel and not your own choice! Something we all know, yet we love to blame it to the world around us. Performance pressure, pressure to get promoted every year, to get increments, to achieve your incentives, qualify to get rewards and recognition. All these so called motivators are focused on moving up the so called corporate ladder but what about the dilemma of work life balance? The ability to choose what to do, when to do and how much to do. How are we ever going to balance this?
Many feel that the only way to achieve this is to work very hard for few years of your life and then retire to a life style of choice. While this could be a good strategy, many never survive to get to the point of retirement and the ones who do get so bored because they got used to working hard, that their retirement activities put more pressure on them than what work did! Some work hard and then take a sabbatical to renew themselves and go back later and then find when they go back that they are competing for their jobs with younger contenders.
So what is the easy answer? Wish I had it because this may be the million dollar question of our times. However, if I look around some happy and successful people I see their focus was not to build a resume though incidentally that did happen as well. Their focus was to find something in life that makes them happy, makes them jump out of bed every morning and makes them dance and celebrate every small success.
I remember Steve Jobs address at Stanford specially the part where he says, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. This could be about building a life because this question is more powerful than will I get my incentive this quarter?
Some of you reading this may feel, its easy to think like this when you are Steve Jobs and while I do agree to that I am sure it is this question that made him Steve Jobs.
Let me share insights from my dear friend and a personal hero Navin Gulia who once told me that he believes disability is never in the body but in the mind, because if you decide you can, you can achieve anything. And he is living proof of this ideology because being on the wheel chair has not stopped him from traveling the world or scaling the peaks driving himself in his own customized car. He has build his life and his own brand working with the ones who need him the most. Corporations and institutions invite him to talk to their people about motivation and that by the way is a good resume too!

As another year comes to an end let’s invest in some of these thoughts for ourselves. Let’s all build a life and make this world worth living.