Survive from being a "Nowhere man" – the goal-less state

Have you ever stumbled upon your internal question of what is a real success ? Have you ever dithered over the fact as to why, some people are much more successful and happy and content over the others ? What it takes to be happy ? A high-flying job or a lot of money is not success as a whole, otherwise there wouldn’t have been so much anger and politics and discontent, stress, marital discord, disintegration of relationships, adultery and lack of loyalty, and so much of tension with the friends and relatives for the top executives and the rich people. It is the lack of balance in life, a lack of direction in life that creates these symptoms.

Probably the biggest trouble with the youngsters today is the lack of direction. With the materialistic trend, their needs are very high, their expectations are very high, but they are not sure what they really want or how they will get those or if at all. Eternally standing at the crossroads all the time is what makes them angry and confused, stubborn and blaming, bewildered and hopeless – even suicidal. IITs have the highest suicide rate among all institutions in the country. One of the reason is that for years they took IIT as the final destination, a state of have-all, and when they understand that it is only the beginning of another journey, they find it hard to take. Defining success is not a part of the things that the parents try to teach their children, leading to all the trouble and the internal dilemma and confrontations in their lives.

As our vision is often blurred, and the future uncertain, all the more we need to know ourselves – our hopes, dreams, wants, likes & dislikes – self-knowledge is the highest form of knowledge and is the most potent tool in one’s hands. And there-from comes up the goals and objectives of one – the destination of a human being. Goals give us a meaning and something to live for. It inspires us and help us move. Active people age quickly after they retire.

The pathetic fact is that parents are generally aware of goals, at least most educated parents have a vague idea of it but most do not recognize the power and the crucial nature of it. The result is a disaster more potent than the 9/11 blast because it tends to make the lives meaningless in a certain way. If you do not know what you want, whatever you achieve cannot make you really happy, because you are never sure that you wanted just that. Success needs goals first and goals last – there is no shortcut. Sounds strange – but life will always give you what you ask – but you must be serious in asking.

It is said that if you are going to “nowhere”, any road can take you there. Living without a goal is like boarding a train without knowing where it is going. This is fine for the bohemians without a care, temporarily, but is a sure recipe for disaster for all others. People without goals just tend to wander through life, in a perpetual search of what will make them happy and content. A survey concluded that about 4-9 effective years are wasted in one’s life in average, for a person without a proper goal, when he dithers and roams around options - directionless -rudderless – valueless. Another survey by Harvard found about 85% of the people never find a definite goal in life, of the rest, 70% get it after the age of 25 (when the options of running after that goal becomes very limited). The whole point of Goal-setting is to facilitate success. There is an inseparable link between goal setting and performance, in any area. A goal is like the grain of sand which exists at the center of every pearl, and about which the pearly material has gathered. It is the ‘big idea’ around which one’s Constructive Imagination builds, deposits and accumulates its wealth of material.

Parents spend lakhs of rupees on their schooling and coaching centers to ensure they get in somewhere – typical craze are Doctors, Engineers, MBAs – with thousands of low-grade Institutes springing up, it is awfully easy now – with the big companies giving up the idea of people and seeing them as mere resources who can clean the shits of US companies, getting a job is also easy. But then ? Then the question comes, now what ? What about their internal strength and value base ? About their life skills (soft skills training are common for interviews) and survival skills ? What about their relationship handling skill ? Their resilience or survival skills that can make them survive thro’ a tough time or handle a major failure or setback ?

Even in Management, the whole idea stands upon the concept of Objectives and goals – of a company or of individual divisions and the associated managers. Peter Drucker started the modern management principles by the idea of MBA, Management by objectives. But people, including MBAs learn the tool, not knowing even this basic perspective and that makes them incapable of having and applying the power of goals in their own lives. A survey among the MBAs found, 93% know it is good to have goals, but only 3% have written goals and only 1% review them regularly. I have myself often done a quick survey among the different batches in my classes at the Management Institutes, and found the result tallies. After 15 years in schools and colleges and of course - expensive coaching centers, they still are not aware of their true desires or how to make those wishes and ambitions concrete – with concrete SMART goals that can truly unlock the potential and that can spawn the 5 Ds, direction – dedication – determination – discipline – deadlines.

Goal-setting is not just a theory, it is a practical process that can be learnt, but then to be implemented by practice. There are steps and techniques of it, which one can learn to do it successfully. Goals must be taken in balance between the 6 spokes of life : Family – Financial / educational – Physical – Mental – Social – Spiritual that will ensure an even balance when that wheel will run. But the path cannot be taken until you know where do you want to go, and that is the most crucial thing for success. The most painful fact is that either you will have a goal, or you will have to ever run – to meet somebody else’s goal

Survive from the parental apathy

My wife was elated and sad when she came back from the parent orientation in our daughter’s school, that I couldn’t attend. It seems Brother Mac, the invited speaker, had given an excellent lecture about parenting adolescent children, especially girls. She was gag a about it and sad at the same time because most parents were always complaining about “wastage of time”, “he hasn’t married even and lecturing us on parenting” and “what is there in these gyans & boring lecturing “ etc. My wife went to the Principal to specially thank her for the event and the visibly sad Principal smiled, “you are telling it should have been for more time, see .. most parents have even left before it ended”. My wife smiled back “If you arranged a lecture of which coaching center will be the best for Joint entrance , they would have asked for the whole day”.

It is extremely difficult to handle own children, this is not only my personal experience but I have heard it from some top-class motivational speakers of the country and abroad, many of whom are my Gurus and have confided this in private. Even Dr. Stephen Covey, arguably the best Motivational trainer in the world, has described in book after book, how he had painfully fought for years to handle few of his own children to keep them in proper direction. Everyone needs training, everyone needs guidance from people who are experts in their fields, and the parent community need this the most, but neither they are bothered, nor we have any societal awareness about how this thing is the most required to improve the society itself, beside the country. Parents handling of the children often sways between the extremes and that tilts the balance, the crucial factor in developing a well-rounded individual

The strange apathy of most parents toward proper parenting is strange and in a way dangerous. These people often look at their children as investments, even when not, they think their duty is to ensure success of their children and they spend like anything and do all other work to keep their children at studies. The trouble is that we have schools for every conceivable subject under the sun, but not for parenting. They don’t understand that to make his son a successful man, he has to be successful and even more, a man !! Alas, we do not have schools for making a man (or woman) out of a pupil, we have them to make Doctors or Engineers or MBAs (let’s not talk about the quality), who are what, they themselves do not know but definitely not men or women, they are rather happy to be treated as “resource” by the companies, and the Companies are more than happy to be expected to do that.

The parents normally think their duties are finished when their children get a chance in the IITs or IIMs or any good Institute, or even the bogus MBA Institute that takes a lot of money, because it is then their responsibility to get them jobs. The result is often disastrous. Dr. Aniruddha Deb (a top Psychiatrist associated with MON in Koikhali, who was invited by IIT-KGP to work on their student suicide problem), told me “The day we set foot there, we heard there was a suicide in the morning. We worked on them for 6 months, there was 5 suicides and 7 unsuccessful attempts, beside we must have been able to counsel and bring back from the verge at least 30 guys. But the real problem lies with their parents, they never taught them anything except studies. They simply can’t handle a failure. All these guys who reach there, were the first boys in their class all their lives, and suddenly now, in a class of 40, someone has to be the 39th or even 40th This becomes unbearable for them.

Beside the question of training the children for handling disappointments or failures, we push them towards a blind competition with almost no value or moral base (nowadays, after the breakup of joint families and the added pressures and so called liberal society, the value base of most parents themselves have eroded to a strange extent), no life skills and even any slow training on how to handle relationships.

I often ask a question to people, you want your son to be this.., then what ? This “then what” part they do not know, for them the story ends there. They expect their children to be happy ever-after, as the fairytale stories end. The problem is that the real story of life starts from there. The trouble in handling the office and the work cultures and politics (some learn that from their families though), the marital discords, trouble in handling relationships, lack of life balance, drinking and allied problems, lack of loyalty or caring.. the list are endless. The happiness quotient often goes down, and even often with enough income level or wealth, they live in an unhappy state. This make the ties break.

Brother Mac gave a heart to heart talk about the experiences of his own life and also from the ones gathered in the last 40 years when he has been working with different schools. He said, most children, particularly from the affluent and rich families, are going haywire because they feel they are neglected by their parents who are living their own lives and basically give a damn about them, even while giving a lot of money as they thank that can compensate. Internally, these pupils are angry, unsecure, hopeless and basically give a damn.. as they feel they have to give that back to all other people in this world. Nowadays parents are treating their children as co-habitants and do not even communicate their love for their children, which is there for sure, he said, but are often not even apparent.

There the problem lies, at least partly. Parents expect that while we are paying so much money, schools should take care of all things, which is impossible in a way, as some basic values are always inculcated by the parents and the family and that cannot be avoided. Previously, there used to be a lot of people in a family in a joint environment, and the children didn't feel lonely or neglected by parents, there were so many people to give her the love, caring and company. Children, particularly the adolescents, go through a difficult period - with all the questions, doubts, insecurity, new knowledge, fast-changing world, sudden changes in their bodies which they don'y know how to handle, unreliable and problematic friendships, and their ideas getting smashed everyday. This is the time when they start getting out of the protections and start getting the first feel of the real world - this is often frightening and they need the love and caring the most. This is the time they get angry, careless, reckless and love-hungry. Parents should understand that money isn't everything, love is - almost.

Parents also have a strange attitude towards anything not directly related to their children's studies, or rather, their chance of scoring in the Joint Entrance exams. They simply shut their eyes to the question of a balanced development and the fact that the concentration, memory, values, direction everything can be sharpened, increasing the overall effectiveness manifold, by some simple training. Even when they are told, they think it is a waste of time or money or both, and do not also try to replace the effect by themselves. But parents cannot know everything and cannot give the training on certain aspects and for that, motivational and behavioral trainers are there. But usually the parents should and must put forth some basic values and morals without which no external training really work. Most importantly, the best training in this regard is to set examples by their own lives