YOUR JOB Vs YOUR ACTUAL POTENTIAL:

You must have heard this famous saying many times that “No job is big or small, If you do it with honesty and hard work”.

What does this statement mean? It’s literal meaning is: “No job is superior or inferior compared to any other job”. It means that all jobs are equally important and equally respectable. It indicates that whatever job you do, it is worth doing, no matter what it is.

Some statements are so misleading that they can completely divert you from the very obvious facts of life. You need to see the roots of some prevalent beliefs which are being used by people for people to achieve their selfish motives. “No job is big or small” is one of those proverbs which have been used for centuries. But did you ever notice, who says this, and to whom?

Most of the people just keep repeating what they have heard from others without putting their own brains to it.

Whether you accept it or not, reality does not differ and reality is that every job is different, and can’t be equal in any terms whether it’s the respectability for it in the society or its ‘return on efforts’ is concerned.

Let me take you back in the past for better clarity on this:

When the Industrial Revolution happened in Britain in the 18th century (nearly around the year of 1760) and from there spread to other parts of the world. Suddenly this caused an eruption in the requirement of laborers to operate the machines and to work on the assembly lines. It opened up a large amount of employment opportunities and it kept on increasing exponentially. People were happy to get a job which was giving them a regular income. Businesses started growing rapidly due to the scale of production increase with the help of machines and the people who were operating them.

Gradually with this rapid growth and expansion, economic conditions of the masses started growing and people started acquiring better financial conditions and a better life style in terms of their enhanced ability to think beyond their jobs.

People started comparing their incomes and socio-economic status with each other, which led to the comparison in different jobs. As a result people started becoming reluctant in choosing the jobs which paid them less and which involved laborious efforts. Eventually this caused attrition and difficulties in employee retention and new recruitment.

Finally many organizations realized that people have to be trained on few things which can keep them motivated to do their jobs and create an acceptance for any kind of job conditions. Hence the so called “trainings” started by Human Resource Development units of these organizations. In the name of people-development these training centers started mind mapping of their employees according to their business needs. Many different training programs were developed and thousands of human resources ‘Jargons’ came into existence like – ‘Management Process’, ‘Job Analysis’, ‘Functional Job Analysis’ etc.

“No Job is Small or Big” is one of these phrases which were used as a strategy to manipulate your mind and make you believe that whatever job is given to you is promising and not inferior in any aspect to any other job, hence stop comparing your job with any other job. What was the immediate effect of this strategy in those times, could be debatable. However one thing is pretty clear: This whole effort resulted in a long term psychological effect of “social proofing”. Social Proofing is: when majority of people are approving something, it becomes a norm and you tend to accept it without any rationale.

Now the question is: What is a perfect job for you?

Did you ever think what is your actual potential? Is it utilized completely by the job that you are doing? Majority of the people can at the most think about a higher designation or a higher role in the organization or in the industry with a higher paycheck in the future when they will get greater authority and thereby they will be empowered to show their actual potential to the world.

This is just a beautiful mirage that helps you to keep postponing your action which is required today. Your actual potential is hidden within you and only you can realize it. You must have seen people doing same kind of jobs for their entire lives, do you think that’s their maximum potential?

Couldn’t they do something better, and what stopped them by doing so. There are people working for house keeping, security, administration, maintenance, logistics, production, sales, purchase, marketing, branding, management, higher management, leadership etc. You know that these all areas require manpower, but for whom? It is required by the organizations.

But what is required for you? You need to realize your potential above your job requirement.

Whether you realize it or not, you have a way higher potential than you can ever imagine.

You need to differentiate between your utilization and your exploitation. If you are living a routine life where you are just repeating what you did yesterday, last week, last month, last year and so on, then certainly you are not even nearby your actual capacity. You must be knowing people who are working for last 25 to 30 years in the same industry and they call themselves experts of their respective fields.

Psychological illusion of being an expert:

Even a child can understand this, if you are working on same thing for 5 years you will become an expert, there is no other way to safeguard yourself from becoming a so called ‘expert’. All the industries need such robots who have become an ‘expert’ of a ‘piece of work’ only. This is just a ‘tag’ that you fall in love with as it gives you a lot of comfort and respect.

Psychologically this illusion of being an expert is nothing but a mechanism to puff up your ego that helps you to hide your weaknesses. While on the other side you know the hollowness of your so called expertise and you still feel very insecure inside, because you know that anybody would steal this ‘tag’ from you one fine day with his innovative ideas. As a consequence you start demoralizing innovation and creativity around you.

What is your Potential?

Your actual potential  lies in the creativity. When you have the capacity to deliver something new everyday that’s the actual utilization of your true potential which allows you to grow everyday.

You will be able to differentiate between your utilization and your exploitation, only when you will use your creativity and will innovate something.

Let me explain this further:

If you notice a child, you will find he is changing everyday. He talks a different language everyday, new words, new style, everything is new and fresh in his personality everyday. He is continuously in the learning mode. He has lot of questions. He is curious about everything, he does not even feel shy while asking any silly questions. You meet a child after a month and you would be surprised to see the changes. His overall way of approaching to solutions for his own small problems would have changed completely. He is able to look at everything from his very unique angle to surprise your intellect every time.

However gradually by time this quality keeps deteriorating till his education gets completed.

Suddenly what happens, the moment he starts a job all creativity is gone. No relevant questions, no curiosity as if he is done with all the learning and knowledge and now he has to only deliver based on what he has learnt so far, that too for only what he is instructed for, by somebody who has been also instructed by someone else and so on.

Keep the growing nature of your childhood alive.

five ways to deliver your highest potential:

1. Be honest to yourself first: others want you to be honest for themselves to safeguard their security and comfort, which is their selfish motive.

2. Work hard for yourself first: others want you to be more hard working and dedicated, again this is for their ease. It only makes their life easy not yours.

3. Don’t stop learning till your death: Read lot of books. Keep an e-book reader always with you that gives you access to thousands of books instantly. Keep reading blogs regularly and frequently and keep yourself motivated.

  Amazon Kindle

4. Be Curious: Always keep asking questions with yourself and others. Ask difficult questions, which you mostly kept avoiding, obvious questions, relevant questions and don’t assume that you already know the answers.

5. Don’t kill your creativity: If you feel that something different can be done or something can be done differently which can give you more happiness then don’t stop yourself. Keep trying different ways that you can imagine and break the routine.

The statement “No job is small or big, if you do it with honesty and hard work“ does not make sense for yourself.

This has to be changed like this:

“Every job is different because we all are different, be honest to yourself and work hard with your optimum creativity and that will make you successful”.

Wish you all the best ..!!!

Grow higher stay rooted ..

Akhil Mantra

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