We all have heard quotes like “you should work hard and your life will become easier” at least a million times by now. But I haven’t always found this to be helpful. Working hard is important, there is no debating that. But I have a problem with how the whole self help industry, philosophers and motivational speakers portray it, and how we feel about it. This might be a little controversial. Allow me to explain.

Let’s say you are working really hard towards something, it could be a promotion, or an exam, or getting that new client in your business, or whatever. For our example, let’s say you are working towards your promotion. You desperately want that promotion and that sweet appraisal. You are putting in 12 hours a day, you are listening to everything your boss says. You are completely exhausted when you come back home from office. Your daily routine - wake up, go to office, come back, sleep, repeat. Everyday morning you say to yourself, “I know you are working really hard, you just have to do this for 6 more months and you will get what you wanted!!”

Now there are 3 probable outcomes here:

  1. You hard work pays off, you get the result you wished so hard and the song starts playing in your head - “I’m unstoppable, I’m a Porsche with no breaks”.
  2. You don’t get promoted and you are completely depressed and angry.
  3. You don’t get promoted and regret that you did not work hard enough.

In outcome 1 - you are really proud of yourself that you pulled this off. You worked so hard. You are so proud that you might let your ego take over. This may seem like an exaggeration, but speaking from personal experience, this happens when you are emotionally attached to the result (getting promoted in this case). And when we humans think that we have worked really hard towards something, we tend to emotionally attach ourselves to the result.

Similarly, for outcome 2 - you are completely dejected because you are so attached to it emotionally. You think you have worked really hard for this, you deserved this and still you did not get it.

For outcome 3 - this has happened to me a lot. I try to deal with this by thinking “control the controllables”. What is in the past is not in my control now. No point regretting it. Whenever there is the next opportunity, I will make sure to capitalize on it.

See, for outcome 1 and 2, working hard isn’t a problem. “Thinking” that you have worked really hard is the problem. There is a subtle difference. You are in a way “victimizing” yourself, “Oh I’ve gone through so much struggle for this, I deserve a reward!”. This is something very similar to a married person saying, “I have sacrificed so much for him/her, do I deserve that kind of a behaviour?”. The word “sacrifice” is the problem here. If you listen to the mainstream motivation, you will more likely than not, attach your emotions to your hard work.

Someone might object, that emotion is what makes them work hard in the first place. Another objection could be that you work for 12 hours a day for a year and you can’t even express emotion? What are you, a robot? These are completely valid arguments and I am not saying we detach ourselves to such an extent that we stop caring about the result. There is a need to find balance. Instead of saying, “I know it is hard, but I will have to do it, I will have to strive for the result”, say, “I have chosen to do this, toh kar lete hai naa, dikkat hi kya hai? (Let’s do it, what’s the problem?)”. Just a small change in the tone of the sentence will make so much difference in the way you will look at the result and your effort. In my experience, just this small change makes it so much easier to work hard without getting too attached emotionally.

There have been days when this did not work for me. I try to practice gratitude on those days. If you want to know more about practising gratitude, here’s a previous blog. Despite all of this, if it doesn’t help, I just let my emotions loose. You can cry in front of whoever you are comfortable, that helps a lot. All of this is during the “hard work” phase. On the result day, I try to think, whether I am successful or not, I am just satisfied with the effort. Then if I cross the line, I will be really happy obviously, but I try to not let my ego take over, as you guessed, by practising gratitude again. If I fail, I feel sad and I embrace sadness, not resist it. Then I try to think of what mistakes I made, was it controllable, if yes, “OK, Noted.”, if no, “bad luck, not everything can happen in my favour”.

So that’s it for today’s blog. Just remember, a “dikkat kya hai” attitude solves 99% of your mental issues. Do let me know whether you agree or disagree with this blog, Will be waiting for your reactions and suggestions.