All of us have been guilty of comparing our success to our friends' at some point of our lives or the other. While this kind of comparison sometimes leads to us working harder than ever to outdo our peers, more often than not it is quite detrimental.
When we begin to wonder, for example, why our salary is not as much as our friends', we have already introduced doubt and dissatisfaction to our jobs. This line of thought is doing no favours to our commitment to our jobs and it will inevitably swallow the enthusiasm required to perform the day-to-day duties of the job, hinder our drive towards taking initiatives, and replace our creativity with what is required to merely get by and survive, with the continuous obsession of being paid less than our friend working for another company.
No matter what the job or the company is, we must make it our objective to give it our all. Martin Luther King once said, “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'” What we can glean from his wisdom is that no job is insignificant and good work only comes from taking pride in what we do.
Furthermore, no matter how unimportant our jobs might seem to us, it still gives us hands-on knowledge and exposure, adds to our job experience, adds weight to our CV and there are a number of people in the world who would be grateful to have it.
Despite having a goal in mind and the benefits that the job provides, it is possible to sink under the pressure of our surroundings and circumstances. Our interests, directions and obsessions change continually, and getting distracted from our goal is human nature.
Aligning our career decisions to our life’s objectives should therefore be an on-going process and when we are deterred from it, picking ourselves back up is our only option. The following are a few ways to keep our motivation up and achieve our goals:
Clear and sound plan
No matter what our job is, we need to make a clear plan incorporating our goals, specifically stating “why” and “when.”
The best way to go about it is to break long-term goals into short-term ones and smaller tasks stating why we need to achieve them, with a strict timeline.
Ignore others
There will always be people around us with betters jobs than ours. If we are unfortunate, we will also have people around us who like to remind us of how much better their jobs are than ours.
These people will be among our closest friends and family and in the office itself. The best way to handle such people is to realise that they do not understand our own, particular interests, priorities, goals or choices in life. This realisation will help us ignore their remarks. The same realisation will help us ignore negativity coming from other media and most importantly from Facebook.
Find a yardstick for success
We need to compare our efforts and achievements with someone currently more successful than us that we can positively look up to, without feeling belittled ourselves. This will help set a higher target, and force us to work harder to achieve it.
Think positive
Thinking positive can mean just a short reminder to align our minds and actions towards our life’s goal. We need to think about it again and again. Such positive thinking results in good outcomes in our lives. Think of that time you were Best Speaker in a school debate or when you scored the winning goal for your neighbourhood football team. We will soon realise that we have all been a winner at many different occasions in our lives, and we can do it again if we want.
Visualise your desire
If we can see what we want in life using our mind’s eyes, we have a direct stimulation towards achieving it. Always visualise what end result you want to achieve.
Live a healthy life
This often gets overlooked, but eating a healthy diet, working out regularly and sleeping well not only keeps us healthy and fit, but helps focus our minds and lead an overall well-adjusted life.
External motivations can only stimulate us, but we have to take the initiative. Goals are useless without personal drive. When we find ourselves full of doubt, we must remember that only we can pick ourselves up and put ourselves back in the running.
