Death comes calling

Thank you for overwhelming response to my last article ‘Does performance matter?’ Many of you have asked me tips to further improve visibility and build relationships. ‘Network map’ is a concept that I have been sharing with people whom I have been coaching for last three years. I’ll share the same in my next article. Today, I am in a somber and reflective mood and would like to write about another key topic – ‘Death comes calling’

Over the last two years, I have come across many people that I know who are afflicted either with cancer or by stroke. While some of them thankfully recovered, few others were not that fortunate. Those people, who did recover, had to go through a traumatic phase of their life. One of my close friends mentioned the following to me – ‘When you go through this low phase of your life, you suddenly realize that you got all your priorities in life wrong. What were very important to me earlier, like rating, bonus, promotion, money etc. did not mean anything at all in my life. Instead I regretted that I could not focus upon some of the most important things in my life.’ Luckily for my friend, she got a second chance and is able to address her regrets. Infact, I had seen that people who went through such traumatic phase are happier now than before. What about us? Will we get a second chance?

Are you living ‘YOUR’ life? The word ‘YOUR’ is important out here. Are you living a life that is driven by your passions/happiness or are you living a life that is good in the eyes of others? Let me put down here three aspects of how we tend to live our life:

Judgment: There are two ways of living our life – driven by an Internal scorecard or External scorecard. People who are driven by Internal scorecard are those who set their own goals and measure their success against these goals. They have their own barometer of whether they are being successful or not. People driven by External scorecard are those whose success is dependent upon what others think about them. Their success primarily depends on ‘Status’ in the eyes of other people. Unfortunately, most of us fall in the second category – driven by External scorecards. Therefore, all our actions are prefaced by ‘what others would think of me if I do xxxx?’ We live in the world of judgments – constantly either judging others or fettering how others are judging us. Why is it so important about how others think of us? Why do we give so much value to others views or opinions?

Deferring: We defer most decisions in our lives to other people that we have come to a state where we do not even know what we want. Let me give you examples from professional arena (and it is similar in personal arena too). We want our bosses to tell us what should be our next role. We want them to validate our strengths or weaknesses (unfortunately most people do not know their strengths/weaknesses. You are dependent upon your boss – who is just a part of your life; in most cases less than three years of your overall life – to tell you about yourself). We need our bosses to tell us what training programs we should go to and what initiatives should we be leading. Why do we defer so much? Why can’t we take control of our lives? Why can’t we KNOW about ourselves? Bosses are highly experienced and knowledgeable people but they cannot know/understand you as much as yourself. I am a manager and it applies even to me too. There is no way I can understand my direct reports as much as themselves.

Important People: When we give value to views/opinions of other people, we always go wrong about who the important people are. We value so much opinion of our peers, bosses, and colleagues that we just ignore the most important people of our life – our family. When did you last seek feedback from your spouse? (Now, this often turns into a joke but in reality it is the spouse that is an integral part of our life, not our manager). When have we taken a pause and reflected how good a father/mother we are, how good a son/daughter we are, how good a friend we are? How many times have we taken a pause to reflect on what our spouse, children, parents, friends are thinking of us?

I am not saying views of other people are not important. Living in the world we are, we need to manage perceptions of other people as they have a significant impact on our own success. But I am asking you, to know about yourself and see if you could even give yourself a chance to pursue your passions and lead a happier life.

Take examples of inspiring leaders – Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs and many others. They achieved an iconic status, success in their lives and more importantly, led a happier life because they pursued their passions. If they would have led their life on how others perceived them, they would not have made a mark on this world. What about many of us? We are living an insipid, totally uninspiring life driven and controlled by others views of us.

It’s time for us to break these shackles. It’s time for freedom. It’s time we take charge of our own life and lead it, independent of judgments of other people. To know more about yourself, follow these three simple steps:

Step 1: Create a list of activities that you will do, if you know death will come calling tomorrow

Step 2: Create a list of activities that you will do, if you know death will come calling next week

Step 3: Create a list of activities that you will do, if death comes calling next year

See the patterns across these three lists. They will point to priorities in your life and provide potential clues to your passions. Make a master list of these three lists and pursue them, independent of what others think about you; independent of risks that you have to take. You will live a much better life than 99% of the people in this world.

Believe me, when Death comes calling, we wake up to live a better life.