The Race to Nowhere
Arvind Ramani
Co-Founder at Meraki | Recruitment | Talent Advisor | Change Management Enthusiast | Diversity & Inclusion | ISB GMP Co'22 | Caregiver to an Autistic boy
When I started my career 16 years ago, not a day went by when I would ask myself... what next? And more importantly, who is my peer and how to I beat him/her to the next promotion OR take a higher percentage paycheck in the next annual review. I don't know where this feeling stems from, but I sure do know that this feeling is universal, and must I say, utterly wasteful.
If you have been in a position where you frequently compare yourself to others and felt upset that they seem to be doing so much better in their careers than you are, join the club. You will be fooling yourself if you say that you never asked your self this question. Well, some of you might have asked yourself this early in your career, and others later. But if you truly reflect, everyone of you have asked your self this at least once. (If you haven't, we need to meet)
This read is more for those who have found a way to beat this race. Those who really rise from this question are not the ones to ignore their peers. Neither are they the ones who end up learning from others success/failures. I suppose the ones who have risen have found the secret sauce to this dish called work life. And that is to live in the present. The competition is made for those who don't want to rise beyond the constructs of what has been told to them.
Ever see yourself as the race horse with a pair of blinkers limiting you to your lane. The world around you is betting on your success, some are backing you and others are plotting against you. Truth be told, you are running one full circle and coming back to where you started, and the world decides if you won or lost. Well, as the race horse, if you landed where you started, did you actually win? Isn't that the race to nowhere.
Lets take this to our office construct, where you are competing against someone to win the next promotion. The audience will decide the rules, and you have to play by them. The rules here could range from things like limited perception, paralyzed mindsets, inadequate data, poor judgement, emotional feedback and inability to discern facts from reality . Mind you, these are all rules that we must deal with on a daily basis - so please ignore the negative connotations (Sarcasm intended). Irrespective of the outcome and all the surrounding factors, you either win or lose the race, based on the audience who set the rules. 'They' set it up for you to succeed or fail.
Yes you got that promotion - Perhaps not in doing what you like!
Yes you got that raise - Was it enough to satisfy your hunger?
That's the race to nowhere.
Ask yourself this question - If you are winning at what others have defined, is that really winning?
Share with me your stories of rising above the rest; you never know it may inspire a race to somewhere!
And back to some humor - one for the road!
#BeyondTomorrow
Manager, Talent Acquisition at Avantor
5yThanks, Arvind, for sharing valuable life experience. At the outset of my career, I was also a part of irrational competition & loaded with negative emotions, stress, self-doubt & exhaustion. But fortunately, within a year, I pulled out of the spiral. Instead of redundant competition, I focused on incremental improvements within myself, and surprisingly, with an attitude of competing with myself, eclipsed all my competition. Now I have got more than what I could have achieved while competing with others.