Chasing someone else’s dream…

Strange how this thought kinda came up on me... lately a good number of people at work seem to throw this question at me... which lead to me thinking about this

What are my long term goals at the company? (Clueless-ness signals a red-flag)

I am seeing a trend of increasing working hours and decreasing working morale among my group of friends… actually this is pretty evident with my own work as well… I guess the enthusiasm and excitement of finally being able to join the workforce only goes so far… few are actually contented and even fewer are actually passionate with what they are doing…

Instead of just sweeping this under the rug and accepting this as it is. I decided to put some thoughts into this. Most people that I talk to seem to admire people that pursue their passion and dreams regardless of circumstances. The friend who decides to pursue a career in music due to deep interest even though he has an engineering degree gets awed upon.

This truly should be admired. I recently spoke to this true friend of mine and looking at what he is doing with his life, really encourages me to think about what I am doing with my life… =) Always good to have reality checks once in a while… cause if you don’t, it is easy just to get always bogged down by the details (rat-race to climb to the top) and totally missing the big picture (do we really want to be on top).

It’s so funny how often we get so efficient with our work that we know from head to tail how to identify and solve problems at work but never do we really apply them to our lives. Hopefully I am not offending anyone here but at least that is true for my case.

We are encouraged to have goals. If we don’t, we will lose direction and at the end of the day, it will be hard to figure out what we have achieved or where our time went. That’s why I think most companies have team/individual goals to drive discipline and keep everyone focused. Also, intermediate goals need to be identified in order to achieve our long term goals. Constant check and balances are also needed.

I ask myself, how often do I actually apply or even vaguely think about these things in my daily life… answer often lies somewhere between… never… and not often enough. Hence, the resulting discouragement and decreasing morale… because we do not know what we want… and we end up doing something that “we think” we want.

Point of the story is not to discourage but rather to encourage. =) If you’re living your dream life… great! You’re my idol! But if not, I don’t think it is ever too late to make a decision and change the circumstances. Most of the time the excuses that we come up with are never real excuses… because if we really ask ourselves what are preventing us from pursuing what we want, the answer most often boils down to ourselves. Sad fact but very true.

Haha.. .please don’t quote me and go quit your jobs immediately tomorrow ya! =P But really, life is far too short to be spent wandering around chasing dreams that aren’t really our own.