Let’s talk about dreams today. Not the dreams that you see while sleeping. The dreams that keep you awake. The ones that motivate you to get out of bed and work. The ones that give you some purpose in life. We all have dreamt of something or the other. The dreams have been of different magnitudes based on the conditions around us and our age. For example, when I was in kindergarten, I used to dream that I will become the Prime Minister of India one day and all the criminals and “bad people” will run out of India. Now obviously that is ridiculous. All of us have had some ridiculous dreams when we were young. But we have had some serious dreams as well. I had a dream college. I wanted to go to IIT. I tried to achieve it and failed. That hurts. But what about the dreams I already achieved? What about the dreams YOU already achieved?
My life today, is the dream life of my 19-20 year old self. My dream was to get a good package in a reputed company and to get my career off to a flying start. But does it feel like that today? Not really. Why is it that when you achieve something, that you wanted so desperately some time back, does not feel that big of a deal now? I don’t feel as energized and excited as I was going to the office for the first time. Let me give you another example. Back in 2016, I had just completed my 10th standard and I was very excited to get my hands on my first smartphone. I still remember, for the initial few days, I used to take care of it as if it was a new born baby. But then, after some time, it did not feel that good. It just became my phone. Not the phone I was so excited about, just “my phone”.
A friend of mine had a dream to get into a FAANG company. For those who don’t know, FAANG stands for Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google. These companies are top tier companies to get job as a software engineer. He studied hard, really hard. After a lot of hardwork, he was finally able to achieve it. He was placed in Amazon. He was dancing like crazy when he received the email that he was selected. But if you see him today, he treats it as if it is such a normal thing, “why is everyone so obsessed about me getting into Amazon? It is not that big of a deal.” This happens in every aspect of life. Even when you see someone beautiful/handsome for the first time and you have a crush on them, it all seems so beautiful. It seems like wow if I get to date them, I will be the happiest person in life. But relationships get boring pretty quickly if efforts are not put in.
Obsessing over what we don’t have and then taking for granted what we have and then obsessing over something new is the endless cycle that almost all of us are trapped in. This cycle leads to most of the mental and emotional issues we face throughout our life. For example, let’s say your dream phone is an iPhone, you see all the celebrities carry iPhone, you see many of your friends have bought an iPhone, you start feeling jealous of the people owning an iPhone, you start having an inferiority complex because you have a cheap phone and most of the people around you have an iPhone. See, I am not saying that having a wish to buy an iPhone is bad. Your dreams motivate you to perform and make yourself better. The problem is the obsession and all the negative emotions that come out of it. So what is the way out of it? Well there is no single correct answer to it. I am no expert at it, but I would like to share what has worked for me.
If you have read the part 5 of my blog series “The Secret to Never Ending Happiness”, the things that I have mentioned in there have worked well for me. I find myself obsessing less over small things. I have also implemented the things mentioned in part 3 of “You are a hypocrite!” to improve at reducing the number of factors that affect my mind and the weightage of each individual factor. The “Karm kiye jaa, fal ki chinta mat kar” phrase has worked really well for me.
To tackle the 2nd problem, the ’taking for granted’ problem, I practice gratitude. I consciously try to be grateful to all the things that I have got in life. I mentioned this in We are all nepotistic. We all are privileged in some or the other way. If we learn to practice gratitude, we start to appreciate the things we have in life rather than taking them for granted and that solves the ‘obsessing over the dream’ problem as well. Our attitude becomes something like this: “Although I don’t have it, I am happy. I will strive for it, if I get it, that’s great! I have one more thing to add to the long list of privileges I already have. But even if I don’t get it, I will be happy and content with my effort.”
So that was today’s blog. Hope you enjoyed it. Thankyou for reading and stay tuned for more!