What separates who you are from who you want to be is explained by a single word.
Determination
Living and working here, it strikes me continuously, day by day and for more and more people, the total lack of it.
Maybe its a reminiscence of history, maybe its genetic heritage, maybe it's the "latino way", I have no idea.
But it is clear as day: on the average, the determination is present within young people here much less than in Europe.
The past week was a normal one, compared with the normal distribution, with a lot more failures than successes, and with strong disappointments.
Still it is hard for me to figure out why I get disappointed.
Its not like I normally have high expectations from people, because I do not.
I begin by considering everyone around me average, and then working them up or down my internal scale of "intelligence". As the process of getting to know each other advances, so does my opinion and interest in them.
Giving everyone a second chance, I try to make sure that my usual tendency of labeling people does not stop me from treating them fair or "missing" someone that might be at least an interesting conversation.
And still, when they prove their averagenes, and in some cases much worse, I feel totally disappointed.
Its like something breaks in me every time another person shows me what I already know: there are so few truly great people in this world, at this moment, that statistically it is almost impossible to meet them.
Even though I have had the luck of meeting one or two of them, I do not appreciate it and want always more. My mother will now say that without this trait humanity would not have come out of the stone age.
Similarly to a dog that will eat as much as you feed it, I want more and more great people around me, and I also get upset when the reality proves different.
In this regard perhaps I am also a bit on the stupid side right?
Stop having expectations from people is the obvious answer. "In this way, you will be glad when you get surprised and just happy when they prove the contrary" someone once told me.
Even though I kept thinking about it every time I get a disappointment, it seems that I am not capable of doing it.
Why? Because I have such big expectations from myself that, organically, I feel that people around me should be more than average.
At one point in my life, in one of those moments when you are completely honest with yourself, I accepted the following challenge: prove that you are a great individual and then you can have expectations from the ones around you.
As Gandhi said: "How can I judge others when I know how hard I fight with my own demons?".
So I started to fight my demons, and as small victories started to emerge, so did my subconscious expectation that the ones around me have to "deserve" me.
That's reason one, and the most important.
The second is that I assign so much importance to every moment of my life that I literally hate people and situations that waste them.
In the end, for me its a strong internal value: respect my time and I will respect you.
Simple yet very hard to enact and respect.
This becme crystal clear for me when, a few days ago, someone asked me why don't I do something that was in my power, for the good of my team, but in a unfair and unjust manner to the other party involved.
In an instant, as my brain (which seems to be very empathic) processed all the implications, my stomach started feeling strange and a strong sense of indignation took me by surprise.
So, it seems that I do have principles, even though I know some people that do not believe this.
Should I stop having expectations from the people around me?
Yes, because otherwise, considering it all, its clear that I will be constantly disappointed.
No, because if I do, I will not have the chance to meet those fantastic few people that make it all worth it.
For now, I decided to continue on this frustrating road, and ask of others a minimum level of intelligence, according to my own standards and measures.
If they don't conform, and I do not care enough to make them change, then I will stop wasting my time and move on.
It is said that it does not really matter in life if you take good or bad decisions.
The most important thing is to commit and take a decision, any.
If it proves to be the bad one then change and improve.
Never be undecided.
My friends in trading will smile while reading this last sentence, as they are amongst the few people in the world that need to take a decision no matter what happens, how much information they have or how undecided they are.
What if we could all act like traders do with the important decisions of our daily lives?
3 comments:
http://www.wisdombook.org
Dude, keep on having expectations, high expectation of people, and never get tired of communicating that in every single manner.... That was part of my success in my international career in AIESEC, in Mace, In Africa...
Read this and find more about it, how to make it work on your advantage instead of making you feel disappointed... It is more than a technique, an art that develops when you really care...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect
Hope this helps...
If you want we can have a Skype talk when needed...
And remember that latinos think wth the heart first, always... If you want to get them to do something, even for their on benefit, that needs to enter and start by the heart, nowhere else, and emotional blackmailing works - if you do not have principles against it - some times the end justify the means?? Do you believe that? A latino feeling guilty in the right way, will perform, and with proper orientation and coaching, will get out of that dark box... I am talking from my personal experience, that is how in my past several people helped me to get out of mine :P
Cheers and keep on posting...
Dey...
At this point I am willing to try anything to get results with these people, so why not.
The discussion why to do it or not for me is a complicated one.
On one hand I know from how I used to be in the past that you need some sort of "starting up" in the beginning, and if no one is there to give it to you, you just end up like all of the others.
So I feel ok to help others and give them the nudge.
On the other, I strongly believe that if you do not have that internal "fire" (even if very small), that spark in your eyes, it is hard for someone to "jump start" you.
I do not believe at this point that the fire can be truly lit by someone else.
Because more than anything, we motivate ourselves.
Yes motivating speeches work, yes conferences and discussion can give you the new outlook on your own life. But then you go back home, and slowly sink into your old habits.
Without the power to motivate yourself change cannot really happen.
Also, there is another frame of mind for met.
My view that it is noble and romantic to want to change all those around you, to make the world a better place by involving everyone else. Yet, when it comes to actually DOING it, you come to realize that it is more efficient in terms of energy (emotional and physical) spent to focus only on certain individuals. The ones that have the wish to be better, the drive to keep at it and the internal fire to keep them going.
The old problem of quality and quantity.
In the end, it is really all about me.
I am stubborn, egocentric and sarcastic, but I have a deep urge and desire to change in better the few people around me that I like.
Until now I have truly succeed with one.
Come to think of it, that's why there are only a few of them, because being the way I am, its not easy for everyone to like me :)
Self fulfilling prophecy right?
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