Mirror Mirror on the wall!

Grab your phone now, open your selfie camera, or simply look into the nearest mirror … do you see yourself? …. look deeper, do you recognize who you are? … take some more time to think, are you the person you wanted to be? … Do you recognize yourself from deep inside?

I once raised a question to a group of leaders who work at several locations and asked them “Are you the person you wished to be?”, and suddenly the hall was full of silence .. some had an answer in mind, whether yes or no, while the majority were actually thinking of the real answer .. Don’t you think of this now, while you are reading this?

With a great number of people being obsessed today by material life, speed, strength, position and status, a great number of people breach their values, step on other people’s hearts and toes, and push people around all throughout their journey. The greatest compromise people perform today is unfortunately a compromise on values and key priorities.

A world of masks!

We all wear masks and we all have dual (if not more) personalities .. At work we are different than home and maybe different than with friends as well, but when we are back at home, and remove all the masks, do we still recognize ourselves from within?

Here’s a quick exercise …

1. Write one line about your major goal in life.
2. List your top 5 values, in order of priority. Your top 5 important dimensions of how you wish to live a satisfactory life (example: Family, Integrity, passion, knowledge, ..etc).
3. Define a target for each value / dimension. (for example, using the above values mentioned in point 2: happy family, doing what I promise every time, feeling great while at work, reading a new article every day, ..etc)
4. Give yourself a score from 1-10 (10 being great, and 1 being worst) and ask yourself how far did you fulfill each value today, then ask yourself if you are getting closer to your goal in life.

Probably the majority of people will pause on point 1, trying to define a major goal in life, as we all find this question extremely hard to answer. Almost every time I ask leaders on their own mission statement in life, I struggle to find a clear one. We are just moving very fast and too focused on work to think about our real selves and our own needs and goals.

How many successful businessmen / women you have seen but with ruined families? How many rich people around but with no happiness? How many leaders who got promoted at work but lost real friends who loved them behind? How many people who compromised their values for short-term wins?

As much as life is built on a “missing something”, it’s our individual responsibility to play an active role in the balance equation and not leaving it to coincidence or circumstances.

The Market Game

Every single day we trade .. we trade our time for work, then work for money, then money for happiness (whether happiness was in family, possessions, or a simple vacation).. isn’t this correct?

Maybe it’s time to reverse the equation and flip the order … What actually makes you happy? Shouldn’t that be the first question? I have seen a great number of leaders who focus on generating money and spend the majority of their time at work to be successful, linking this to better income and better family status, but have they ever asked their families if this is what they wanted? What do kids want more, mum and dad or a better smart phone? (Probably some of the kids today would say a better phone, and this is a sign of emotional detachment from families, and actually defeats the purpose of work for parents!).

Being happy with simple things in life means that you are confident of your direction, and you are not distracted by the aggressive race around you.. Knowing when to pause, say “No” to requests diverting you from your mission means that you will have time to do the things you love ..

Jim Collins once mentioned: ““Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great …. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”

So, it’s that COMPROMISE that we need to think of .. the “trading” equation that we do every day  ..

Recognizing that life is passing by every day, make the best of your day, every day! There is absolutely no reason to waste time in being distracted by the race that everyone is participating in .. focus on your own goals and run your own race .. there is much more meaning in this than following the herd, who will all compete one day on the same prey .. Your treasure is waiting for you at your own finishing line, the line that you draw today and the direction that you set today .. Go for it, live your life the way you planned and never compromise your values and remember, you can run from the whole world, you can fool thousands and feel smart, but you will never fool your own mirror ..

Live a meaningful life ..

Written by:

Engagement Expert, International Speaker & Pragmatic researcher