Corporate Treadmill

Work pressure, expectations from the boss, market conditions and thus, the stressed goal sheets in office- all this leads to frustration that you cannot think of expressing at your workplace. Most of the time you carry it back home with you, and take it out on your loved ones, as they are easily available with listening ear. But that’s not fair!!!, thus creating further imbalance in your life both at home and work.

Let us examine the corporate life with a compassionate eye, many professionals locked in a room running on a treadmill for whole of their life, all the while give so much effort and determination yet not going anywhere? That is how most people end up living. We wake up and spend way too much time driving to work, once there we spend way too much time and energy working very hard for someone else, leaving our own self unfulfilled and empty!

Life waits for no one, and often we get hints of how we can waste away our most precious resource when we work 14 hour days, and our dinner is cold when we get home, our kids are already in bed, and our spouse is just getting ready to turn in for the night. We can miss out on so much! The workplace where we spend so much more time and end up reaching nowhere, if we actually get present to that time and place, make it more meaningful, richer, fuller, compatible and enjoyable, we shall be living a better life with more prosperity and abundance, not only at work but also at home.

Internationally renowned personalities known for their management concepts and practices, even our own Indian management gurus, have given wonderful gyan sessions on leadership and management. But is it not all leading to too much intramural competition creating high pressure and tension and stands in the way of collaboration. Each one wants to promote himself, and then even if it is at the expense of others their life and career.

I agree workplace competition is healthy — sometimes. When it leads to rivalry, the results can be toxic. Many employees today are dealing with backstabbing of colleagues and hostile work environments. Competition is healthy for people. It encourages each individual to work hard and strive to be the best. Too much competition within a group of people working together, however, can be detrimental to the harmony of the team, and thus to the overall progress of the organization.

Those who suggest that "a little healthy competition can’t hurt" are thinking only of offensive tactics and forget that even these efforts, if out of alignment with corporate goals or values, can hurt the organization. When the employee wins, the organization may lose, if not in the short term, then in the long term.

We all are still walking on this corporate treadmill and getting nowhere! Of course there is a solution, which needs to rework the basics, or rather go back to basics, because as a human nature, we all want bonding with others, love, peace and happiness around us, being honest and faithful to our co workers and get the same in return. And this can be done in corporate world also, with little extra effort.

If you are in command and leading the team then you have to facilitate and empower others, be a guide with a torch in your hands, leading them. At no point you should create fear and insecurity in their minds. Even if a feedback is to be given check the intention with which it is given is important, is it an intention to pull down or to pull up and empower. There is always a transfer of energy between two people while going through a conversation. If the intention is of hurt, anger, insecurity, there is a transfer of negative energy, while if you are giving a constructive, positive feedback, for the overall benefit then there is positive energy flow, which works for the benefit of the team and organization as a whole. Stress always brings down the performance and so does the flow of negative energy at the workplace. Even if you need to criticize someone, check your intention first, do it with acceptance towards the other person and see the difference.

Whenever you are throwing your anger on a poor soul, check your own insecurity first, there must be some hidden– Fear and Self- Doubt, which is to be overcome, and it is the most unhealthy emotion for yourself first and then anyone else. For your own benefit, you have to work with yourself, overcoming your own weakness and then anyone else.

We should replace the feeling of insecurity and fear to trust and belongingness in our peers and subordinates. People working in the same team, work in collaboration rather than competition, and then we shall start enjoying the different flavors and colors corporate life has to offer.

It shall be much easier to overcome your frustrations and maybe even turn them into inspirations. This will give you the power to succeed in any organization. This is the trick to overall success and happiness, striking the right balance at work and home.

Let us not forget that a treadmill shall not lead otherwise anywhere. Even if you win this rat race, you still remain a rat, come out of this be a human first and not a machine. Otherwise imagine yourself in an endless, self defeating and pointless pursuit of life. Like the futile effort of a lab rat trying to escape whilst running around a maze or in a wheel, in the modern city, many rats in a single maze expend a lot of effort running around, but ultimately achieve nothing (meaningful) either collectively or individually.

We spend a whole life and realize at the end of it where did I reach? What was that I wanted? We still have time; stop and check, where are you going? We can make the same place much more fulfilled and meaningful for us. The world around us can change and become much better if we are ready to change our-self, it is very simple. It starts from oneself and ends at oneself only.