Of Ambition and Happiness
By NEERAJ SANAN I will be happy to lead an organization 10 years from now!” How often have we all heard such phrases in interviews? Rhetoric, boring, reeking of mediocracy and completely lacking originality. So as I sat high up in the air encased in a 10 mm vacuumized metal box one day, 11,000 metres separating me from dear Mother Earth, a friend’s words echoed in my ears – “You got to write something interesting”. Thus I started penning my views on happiness and ambition, and the hard lessons I had learnt along the way. If you have ambition, you’ll succeed. Oh yes, Sir! You will, but we in India have been brought up in a fiercely competitive environment which seldom allows us to stop. So if you have ambition, you do succeed, but only to become more ambitious. More success makes you more ambitious. Believe me, it’s a Catch 22 situation, only broken by a failure, sweet happiness never being a by-product of success. We laugh, we party riding on our successes, which really is a way to show off. We get pats on the back (which are, by the way, essential) but do not misconstrue them for happiness. It is exactly like a climber who likes to climb a higher peak after every successful climb. It is immensely satisfying to reach a goal, but soon the fire to climb higher is immediately rekindled. As I was giving a finishing touch to this article, I decided to take a sneak peek at the Internet (it makes you realize that your latest thought has a few hundred links to it of a few hundred articles written about it already on the Internet). Lo and behold! I came across a study by Timothy Judge (I love these firangs, they have a study on practically everything!) and see what it proves: ambitious people get better degrees, shorter lives (shucks!) and slightly more happiness than their laggard counterparts. Slightly more… but I am quite convinced that this happiness is not due to their social success. Happiness comes from the small things in life. I wake up to a smiling face offering me coffee, the ride to my office is all green signals, I open my cupboard to see my favourite shirt crisply ironed, no spam mails in my inbox in the morning… these are small things that make me happy. Really irrelevant, or so we thought. Look back, and all of us have had our best laughs about the smallest of things… we have felt good about little details. My favourite is to find a dry bathroom just before I shower! I feel blessed with this realization of the two separate threads of happiness and social progress that I am still trying to weave together, god willing, this tryst will not end. So, dear world, I hope I have made the small big point that success and happiness are actually two sides of two different coins, which can both be pocketed with awareness. Do not expect social success to make you happy; it brings in professional satisfaction and recognition, but not happiness. So anyone who dreams of joining an organization for happiness and success, you know he is yet to learn it the hard way. Happiness must come from within. (The views expressed here are the writer’s personal views, not of his company) Feedback: nsanan@gmail.com
Chief Marketing Officer, MCCS
Tags : Backbeat