Does money bring more stress into our lives?

"Money makes life comfortable,  but along with comes the stress also.
I always feel that it is better to vote for peace of mind rather than this mad race for money”

 

I could attribute these words of my colleague to the context in which he told. I had been to Tiruvannamalai a place where lord Shiva is worshipped in the form of a  mountain. And it is considered auspicious to do a circumference by walk to the sacred mountain.

 

After finishing my work at the local branch office, I have decided to go for the same. And my senior colleague also wished to join. We were in the middle of the same when he uttered those words.

 

It was a late evening and the weather was so pleasant. We have the huge mountain on our right hand side and there were several small temples across the path. We had already visited a few temples.

 

It was more like a physical but philosophical journey and I could easily understand why he said, it is better to have more peace of mind than more money.

 

I just smiled and offered no further discussion. After walking another half a kilometer we found a small colony of houses beside the road. It seemed to be a colony that belonged to poor to very poor people. We could see the small, one room houses, children playing in the open, all the people sitting on cots that are laid literally on the road side and the ladies cooking meals in the open. My colleague  stopped there for a while which I thought was to give a little rest to the paining pair of legs.

 

But he stood there to watch the people around more closely.

 

“Look at the faces of those people, they might be poor but they are not un happy. They might not be having even the basic facilities that we enjoy but they are happy. Why can’t we be content and live life rather than running the race of life?”

 

I did not interrupt his flow of thoughts because my flow of thoughts already started.

 

Many a times we may see the people who get into this ” temporary satisfaction syndrome” for a short period of time and life never changes post that.

 

I just tried to answer two questions that seemed important.

 

1. Is it money that brings the stress along with it

 

2. Can we be happy in life with less amount of money ?

 

Money is just a tool that can be exchanged for something we need or desire.

 

We need or desire for more money only when we have more needs or more desires.

 

As a human being anybody has certain basic needs that doesn’t need a big fortune to take care of.

 

But it is a gradual enhancement in our life style that makes us hungry for more money.

 

In earlier days too people used to earn lot of money. But there weren’t any significant changes that could be seen in their lives. I never found 80 inch wall hanging televisions, ultra modern furniture, designer kitchens. Even a toilet is a toilet, there were no branded toilets. We lived without fabric conditioners, one minute noodles, microwave popcorns.

 

When all these became our basic necessities then earning more money has become a necessity. It is no more an option.

 

Most of the time we blame rising prices but there is one more culprit, rising needs.

 

Earning money is an option. It is our needs/desires that decide the degree of our earnings.

 

Once you are on the top of consuming cycle there is no way that you can slowdown your earning cycle.

 

My second question is can we be happy with lesser amount of money.

 

People can be happy irrespective of the amount of money that they possess as long as basic needs are taken care.

 

It is not that the amount of happiness is directly proportional to the amount of money that your wallet carries.

 

As long as we can live with the minimum needs we can be happy.

 

But does our modified life style allow us to be happy?

 

Certainly not.. let us think more…

 

Can sales be a process driven function ?

I have two incidents to share. Both are different but have something in common-structured work

Incident 1:

Around two months back I had been to a power plant to meet a customer. He was the head of operations there. After finishing our sales presentation he was courteous enough to show us around.
It was a plant that runs in three shifts, eight hours of each. There were around eight hundred people working.

He explained us that the target amount of production is decided by the company head office. Each department like procurement, operations, maintenance knows about the exact targets and work accordingly.

An employee is supposed to report at his work place at the exact shift start time and there will be no exceptions as the finger print detector records the exact time of entry and exit.

I could see a perfectly systematic and smooth flow of operations going on. There were no idle employees. Everybody is fully engaged in what they are supposed to do. We could also see ending of a shift as the big siren announced the end of shift an army of fresh set of employees entered the premises.

I could see satisfaction mixed exhaustion in the eyes of  employees who finished the shift and walking towards exit.

Incident 2:

A visit to any State Bank of India branch at around 11 o clock in the morning can be termed as an adventure. Huge number of people flock the branch. We have still people who hate to use plastic cards and prefer metal tokens to withdraw the funds physically from the branch. All the counters in the branch are full with customers.

 A young and intelligent guy post his graduation, works hard with numerical, logical and all other problems and ends up as probationary officer in the SBI only to find himself solving the problems of two hundred plus people a day. An hour of being in queue I could see that he was not able to even pick up his mobile to attend the personal calls.

In case of the power plant the employee is forced to work because of machines.

In case of bank the employee is forced to work because of customers

But in case of sales, most of the times it is either the pressure to deliver or in a few cases the desire to be a performer makes a person work.

Most of the days a large part of the day is either wasted or not utilized properly in any sales function.

When the end of the month approaches, there will be mad rush and even twenty four hours will not be sufficient.

There are smart sales managers who try to make the people to work by igniting the desire to be performer.

When the company tries to implement systems like online recording of appointments, sales calls made then they are using the factory model of making the people to work because of machines.

But most of the times it is short lived. Slowly people start taking exceptions to the system. Though sales is a different kind of function where certain degree of flexibility is required, too much of flexibility seems to be breaking the very essence of work.

Let the organisations think of having a balanced process to engage people in a productive way which will reduce the heart burns and disappointments for the sales people.

Do we have forward thinking ???

He was never serious about studies. Dropped out of college. Tried learning some weird skills like calligraphy. If at all we find someone with the above set of features do we really bother to encourage him?
But when we read or listen to the founder of Apple, Steve Jobs we feel inspired and impressed.

I read a stack of books with such stories which never fail to provide the constant inspiration at times of trouble.

But a jolt of realization struck me today morning when I received a phone call from an unknown number.

I had a colleague when I was working in Dr Reddy's Labs as Area Business Manager in Kurnool. He used to work hard and a very intelligent guy.

I had always one motto in life. Work hard, prove yourself, get promoted. These are the three principles through which I evaluated people always.

This colleague of mine worked perfect. But he looked like lacking something. He was not excited about the career path that the company offers. In sales when someone finishes his targets and doesn't get you any trouble it is more than enough for the boss. But here it is not the question of targets but the excitement that was missing.

One fine morning he gave us shock. He came with a resignation letter. Those were the days where resignations were quite rare. Though he was not in my team, I had good relationship with him.

More than the resignation, the reason that he gave for that looked absurd for me. He was  telling very confidently that he was going to learn something related to computer software. He wanted to change his career.

For me it looked foolish. A person with no prior experience in computer software, who already spent good number of years in sales industry, thinking of getting into computer field looked very illogical.

I still remember our stand outside tea shop meeting, where I offered him my gyan about why he should continue to work in his current sales role.

The more I offered my logic the more adamant he became.

I heard about him for the next one year. People used to share about he buying a computer, practicing some software course at home. All this looked much more purposeless for me. I felt strongly that, since he was not able to work hard in his current role, he found some excuse to spend the time.

Slowly the information about him stopped reaching me when I moved out of Dr Reddy's and shifted family to a different place.

I was unpacking my laptop today morning getting ready for the day's work at office. The mobile rang and it displayed an international call coming in.

It took some time for me to recognize the caller. It is the same colleague whom I thought was wasting his time with computers.

He lives in US now. He went through all the struggle before he reached there. Worked in Bombay for a small salary, worked in South Africa, then finally landed in US.

I felt very happy for being wrong.

But this episode opened a new window for me to think.

To decide whether you are successful or not,  is it Working hard, being in the same career, looking for great appraisals, looking for career advancement alone are parameters ?

If someone tries to pursue his or her dreams should we label him/her  as a person  trying to avoid the work ?

Not that everybody writes a book about themselves and creates a fanclub like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.

There might be several untold stories of success like the one that I narrated here.

Let us not have just back ward thinking where our heart can appreciate a person who became a legend.

Rather let us encourage a person going to become legend too.

WORK OR ARGUMENT CHOICE IS OURS

Blame will not bring results

Recently I was travelling from Chennai to Trichy in a bus. This was probably the first ever A/c bus ever manufactured in the world. The moment it started I felt that I was in some mechanic shop as I could hear all the parts making noise independently and together.

It was cool inside the bus in  the hot chennai summer.

An hour gone bye and suddenly the cool air gone. Thought that the driver switched off the A/c.

It's not the driver but the bus itself switched off the A/c on it's own.So A/c is gone.

Since it is an A/c bus all the windows are closed. Started sweating.

One more hour gone... slowly getting adapted to the sweat. Sleep was trying to take over the despite the humid and hot condition inside.

Suddenly life seemed to be a lot peaseful. No sounds bus was silent. Now the engine is gone.

Getting up in the middle of the sleep is a gradual process to many and i am not an exception.

But suddenly somebody was shouting. When the voices became loud and abusive I could no more sleep. Somebody was fighting with somebody.

When I got down from the bus I found two groups of people fighting with each other. A careful observation (since it is too dark out there) revealed that there are no outside decoits but it is our bus passengers in two groups fighting with each other.

The topic was clear after a while. One group is arguing against the Govt (that runs the buses) SETC (transport corporation) transport ministry and all other involved in running the bus. Their argument is about how bad the buses are managed.

The other group is pro-govt and arguing against the first group. In the dark I could see two people standing at a distance enjoying their smoke. I too went there to find out who these matured human beings not participating in the quarrel.

To my amazement they are driver and conductor of the bus. 

When I asked them what needs to be done so that the bus will start again, they smiled and told a shocking news we have to push the bus.

I asked them in my broken tamil whether the same is told to the fighter passengers.

"Yes it was told and after that only they started fighting."

I remembered the video that I saw sometime back in one of the training sessions.

It featured a kid who took the responsibility to push a tree that blocked the road and started pushing it alone.

I just invited the conductor to join me in pushing the bus. He agreed. Driver entered the bus and sat in the seat.

Me and the conductor started pushing the bus. Both sides of fighters started watching us. The bus did not move at all. But the movement in the fighters got reduced.

Slowly one by one came. After five minutes of lonely pushing, now we have company of another ten people to push.

The bus started and our journey started.

When we have problem at hand why should we create more problems by arguing....

 

Did we forgot the art of being grateful

Loans to repay, expenses to bear, younger brother yet to get employed, sister needs to get married, father retired, the list seemed to be endless, when my friend started narrating his problems.

For his life is full of problems and even god also left him alone to face them on his own.

I am talking about an incident that happend around ten years ago.

I agree that he had lot of problems and probably limited number of solutions. As they were the days where sales jobs offring great salary were rare.

Probably this might have motivated him to seriously consider and work for the government job as a teacher.

One year of his preparation for the teacher selection exam in Andhrapradesh yielded him the result.

I still remember the day he came to me with a pack of Asha Chocolates from Nutrine company to convey the news.

I met him after another one year. I was expecting him to be happy. But to my dismay he was not.

He had new list of problems. He was placed around 100 km away from his home town by governement. He had to cook his own food. Work was very difficult. Headmaster of the school doesn't like him. Salary is not sufficient to meet all the expenses.

As every year the pongal or sankranthi festival makes me to go home, I met him the next year. By this time his sister got married. Brother got some job. And he too managed to come near to the home town. Now he is able to stay at home itseslf.

But again his dissatisfaction did not die. The scooter that he bought for daily commuting is drinking petrol, His brother could not make it to a government job, his fellow teachers could get a preferential treatment in the school.....

And the last one that stuck was, god was never good to me even after me putting my level best effort.

This is the incident that I am able to observe in length. But I generally see the people who are never happy about anything that they get.
I had a colleauge who got a lakh of rupees as bonus. I was expecting him to share the same happily. But after a month when I asked him about this, he was not at all happy. He was telling that the one lakh is nothing in current scenario, where a plot is costing fifty laks and so on.

I am sure that even if he gets fifty laksh still he will have reasons to cry further.

Just remember the days of our childhood where a small cup of icecream was able to make us happy.
Watching a movie, getting a plastic electronic watch, getting a new pen all of them are reasons of joy.

Then when we grow why is that each reason to feel joy is turning to be pain?

Moral Values : Are they to talk or to practice ?

We always see the people talking about values a lot, but seldom practice. It's not about any big theory, it's about things like "people should be honest, should not take bribes, do one's duty perfectly".

If you translate them into dictionary language they may be like "integrity, morality etc may come.

I just thought about, is there a division in the society ?

Is it that a part of society is ethical and moral while the other part is unethical and immoral always ?

I would like to address this question with the help of some incidents.

Incident 1:

I was watching news in the tv. It was about three people who died in river kaveri in rural Tamilnadu. The three people went into kaveri for a holy dip in the river. Unfortunately they were not aware that due to unlawful sand mining in that area, the depth of the river has increased many folds. The moment they walked a few steps into river they slipped into the abyss created by sand mafia and within seconds they were no more.

All the villagers came and some were talking about the un lawfull activities of the sand mafia, the political connections etc.

Can we conclude that these are the people who practicing and living in the right way?

Incident 2:

For another few days the focus was on sand mafia and un lawful mining of sand in the rivers where so many reporters took pain in surveying the width and breadth of kaveri river.

Astonishingly after few more days when most of media people abandoned kaveri, the un lawful sand mining started again. In one of the news report I could see villagers working as labourers and doing the mining.

When the un masked reporter asked questions to the masked laboures as to why they are involving in such activity, the answer was "livilihood"

I am not going to say anything about this livilihood issue. But when I know that my livilihood costed the lives of three people just a few days back I dont think that reason is valid any more.

Now let me come to the basic question I started with, is there a section of society that is ethical and other part that is unethical ?

The conclusion that I can arrive at is NO

When people are in trouble because of somebody's unethical or immoral behavior then we become value leaders.

If we have a chance to any short cut then we don't bother about the values.

To give you some more examples:

1. If I can buy tatkal train ticket in black market, I don't bother about the values. If I could not get booking, then I blame the people for doing the black marketing.

2. If I can get a recommendation and could get a job, I don't preach values. If I lose my job opportunity because of somebody else getting it in a wrong route then I will be a value champion.

3. If I am able to avoid the queue and could get a seat in the bus then I dont bother about values. If I find, when I enter the bus that there are no vacant seats, then I talk about behavior of people in Singapore and how disciplined they are.

Though my intention is not to say that everybody in society is opportunist, but we find RAW VALUES very rarely.

If we can talk and practice values most of the time (not when we lose) then I think our life (society) will improve.