Growing in Career Beyond Appreciation and Censure

In our childhood we remember the system of rewards and punishments, which our parents and / or teachers put in place to encourage us to do the right things and not do the wrong things. Rewards were pleasurable and punishments were to be feared. We grew up under the influence of this system.

However slowly and unknowingly we started becoming dependent on the pleasures which came to us by way of rewards, recognition, approvals, pats on the back. We also became dependent on avoiding actions that lead to the fearful consequences of censure , criticism, firing. Now we became easily controllable and unknowingly lost our independence

This loss of independence started showing up in our careers. Pleasing the boss became a pleasurable experience to many of us. We started working towards recognition and rewards. We lost track of our own career agendas even if we ever had such agendas in place. We got lost in the jungle of rewards and punishments.

Our bosses know this very well and did not hesitate to use this system to control our behavior. Performance appraisal ratings , increments, promotions stock options etc. ... right up to a nod of approval started driving our behavior. We became incapable of charting our own course. This led us to a general feeling of being lost and demotivated. We had to continually pay a price to get our regular fix of appreciation.

We need to understand our dependence on this system and grow out of it just the way we grew out of the need for candy and toys, Growing out of it will enable us to create our own course and progress along our chosen growth path. We need to make the system of rewards and punishments irrelevant in our work lives by growing out of it. Only then we can enjoy the freedom in our work lives and be the masters of our destiny.

The Art of Handling Unmet Expectations in Real-Time

This was a journey from Los Angeles to Pune. Nothing unusual about it. An Uber ride to the airport - congestion at the LAX airport, car taking time to pull in at the curb. A very long line at the airline checkin, a checkin bag getting wrongly labelled, long security check lines, over crowded carry-on baggage compartment ... and the list goes on till at the arrival in Pune a baggage claim belt that wouldn't start till it was eventually fixed.

During this time I watching my mind respond to the situations ( and there were several) which did not happen according to my expectations. No calamity here, just some minor sources of irritations. The point here however is that the rate at which they were happening was enough to cumulate the minor irritations in the mind. Cumulated irritations causing a noticeable mood shift and accompanied by a reduction in the energy levels.

I was able to catch the mischief at the root. I realized that ignoring this "minor" mischief is the root cause of major mind and life events which led me to think in terms of prevention.

Realized that I need a skill of actively responding to unmet expectations as they happen in real-time. Allowing them to pile-up is never a good idea. On an average day all of us are facing several such "minor" irritants in the form of mildly unmet expectations.

What if I am able to handle these events in real-time ? What if my ability to process these is such that, there is no residual effect of each such event ? Thought this would be a highly useful preventive capability to manage my mental health.

Unmet expectations are of many kinds, some of them many in number - minor and benign, some are significant ( like a cancelled flight, major traffic jam", or very major such as loss of a near one or a job-loss.

I need a single thought process to process every unmet expectation. What would it consist of ?

1. Recognizing at each time the inevitability of some unmet expectations in life.

2. Recognizing that there is not necessarily an evil intention behind the each unmet expectation.

3. Recognizing that there could be a possibility of recalibrating some expectations in the future.

4. Recognizing that a change of solution or an innovative approach in the future is a possibility to rectify some situations.

5. Recognizing that in some cases it might be possible to just gracefully accept expectations around some unmet expectations

If points 1-5 could be combined into a single thought process and consciously applied efficiently at each such event, we will not have a unprocessed backlog, making mental hygiene management a much simpler task.

In reality, I used this approach sit down briefly to handle a batch of unmet expectations during the journey , before heading out of the airport while reflecting on the possibility of improving my capability to process these in real-time. People who had come to pick me up did not suffer the experience of an irritated me.

Wanted to share this with my friends hoping that this would be useful for anyone in any situation. I welcome you to share this with your friends too.