Success and failures are part of our life. But oftentimes we feel dejected when we fail while doing the thing that we want to. Although I’m nowhere near to write an article on success and failures, I just wanted to share the learnings that I had from various sources (It may be my friends, company boss, teachers, or experiences). Prior to all the explanations, let me tell you one thing, I am the one who always thinks of perfections and then finds myself frustrated after an hour or two. Adding to it I’m an introvert who is also an over-thinker. Let us go through the lessons.
The significance of imperfections:
I come from a non-programming background and I always think of writing a perfect code right from the first day. But, too often when we start any job, we have this notion, that the first solution to that problem should be the perfect one, but under this idealism of perfectionism what happens is we are overwhelmed because it’s too ideal to reach. It’s something beyond our capabilities. The thing that happened was, I was looking at the codes of other people and often tend to feel dejected, I approached the CEO of our company (If you work in a startup then it is very easy to approach the higher authorities of your organisation) and he told me one thing, it’s alright to be imperfect, that is how our life goes on. The first solution that you will give will be the worst solution that you will ever provide, but it is important that you write that code, otherwise learning will never happen. The competition is always with the person that you were yesterday not with the entire universe.
Importance of the present:
The second lesson is from my friend, she often used to say “Aaj Mein Jee” — live in present. Too often when we start any task we tend to get lost in our thought process we either think about our past or fearing about our future, what actually happened to me that day or why I wasted my time in the past, what will happen in the future and so on. Maybe some event happened and you regret about the incident, or you are hearing about your future, but honestly, they don’t serve any purpose, it is very usual and very common for us to have those negative thoughts. As we are born to be biased in a negative way, we tend to remember our negative incidents much more, than over positive achievements. The lesson is no matter how big baggage of failure you are carrying but the thing that matters are the small things that are happening around us today.
Learn from your failures :
A story that I learnt somewhere was, there was some experiment conducted and in that experiment, the entire class was divided into two groups, both the groups were asked to make a clay pot but the conditions given to them were different. The first group was told, you are given 15 days and you make as many pots as you can. You will be evaluated on the basis of the number of pots that you make irrespective of its quality. The second group was told to make only one pot. They were told to make only one pot and that should be of the best quality. It should be a perfect pot. You will be evaluated on the basis of the perfection of that one pot. The experiment happened many times and they got the same result. The first group was making a better pot than the second one who was supposed to make the perfect pot. The first group was busy making the pot, failing, understanding and keep improving while the second group was just thinking of that one perfect pot when they finally made it was nowhere to the first group. So the lesson is, don’t think of perfection in one go, it’s an experience that makes you better.
Everything is in our mind:
This one I read from a book by Robin Sharma. The mind is like a fertile garden and for it to flourish, you must nurture it daily. Never let the weeds of impure thought and action take the garden of your mind. Keep it healthy and strong and it will work miracles in your life if you only let it.
All to best to everyone including me! :) Let us end up with this video.