When I observe people in social occasions, I am star-struck by how many of us feel we are in a rat race to get to the top. We will do anything to run over others. We will use any cut-throat measure to show we are the best. We will do whatever it takes to make it up the mountain first.
We feel we are smarter, better, and stronger than others.
The laws of nature teach us that only the strong shall survive. They tell us that we need to have a mental shield to be able to stomach any storm dealt our way by anyone, and take any measure to deflect that storm.
But is it true that only the strong shall survive? Don’t we all survive? Somehow this mentality is engrained in our minds – and we take actions to position ourselves. We try to go to the best schools to pump up our resume, we try to attend all the networking events to build our Rolodex, drive the best cars to attract attention, and worse – show off how much cash we have in our pocket. When I look right and left I see all kinds of people trying to prove why they are the best.
It’s as if this mentality is developed at the onset of hurdles many of us face early in life or in childhood. For some of us, it’s as if we see how our parents struggled to make it in life and we don’t want to go through that as well. After all, if they paved the way for us to obtain opportunities, then wouldn’t that create a competitive spirit within us to prevent failure?
The root cause creating the spirit of survival somehow drives us to strap on our mental shield and fight the competitive war out there in the world.
Yet, how far does this shield really protect us? Let’s observe the mentality of two people with the same drive trying to obtain a similar goal in life that supposedly can only have room for one person on top. I see this at work. Two colleagues, equally qualified, fighting for that one promotion being offered at work.
The irony of the situation is that while both co-workers are equally qualified academically and professionally, the equality of their means to obtain something is not equal. I have seen colleagues take measures to put their co-workers down, make sure they are in the poor limelight, and in some cases falsify their load of work to show how much more they have achieved than their co-worker.
What is constant in this situation with both workers is the attachment to their work, attachment to their company, and sadly attachment to their cut-throat characters. But to achieve what end? Perhaps a bit more pay, more responsibilities, and few more office perks like that new parking spot.
In my view, this is all peanuts in comparison to what is really achieved – a sense of falsifying what your real achievements are, a broken co-worker relationship, and an increase in your internal pain through your unethical behavior. A fight for peanuts is nothing but increasing more pain within yourself.
The shield that you wear to protect yourself from others serves no purpose from shielding you from your own internal pain.
I have provided a simple problem some of you may have seen but my point is this – the law that only the strong shall survive is a law that must be questioned for this very reason that I am about to share with you: In this world that we live in there are plenty of opportunities for us to grow and be part of without fighting with each other to meet personal goals. We can do this calmly. We may not be able to do it in the box or situation we are in – but it exists outside the box and it is a law that I call abundance.
This law or abundance stipulates that the very same opportunity that you are fighting with others about in your box, exists outside the box. The hard part is discovering what is outside the box. We don’t see this when we are restricted in our situation or in the box – but what many of us have discovered is that there are tons of opportunities out there to be explored outside of the situation or box that don’t have to be achieved by fighting with others.
Look around. This is why people leave jobs as there are other better jobs out there. This why people change their friend circles to associate more with those that help them grow positively.
Here are five steps you can take to create change in your environment and realize abundance without harming yourself or others:
- Understand your situation. Just sit back and internalize your box. Observe how your feel. Make note of what is causing your pain.
- Go deep inside to determine what your goals are. Realize what it will take to achieve your goal in the box you are in. Understand what relationships will be impacted to achieve your goal. Can the goal be achieved without doing any harm to others in your box.
- Determine what change in you will need to occur to meet your goal. This is important. Other people will not change. Only you can. Don’t run over other people. Evaluate actions that don’t harm others.
- Explore opportunities outside the box. Shift your thinking from doing harm to others in the box to walking out or around the box. Get around others – don’t take them on and fight to achieve peanuts. If this means leaving work to achieve an objective in another company, so be it. If it means finding new friends, so be it. If it is finding a new hobby, so be it.
It is more a noble cause to achieve personal growth without harming others, than to fight for something that achieves little professionally and personally.
My feeling is that we should not run over others. Many will argue that business is cut-throat and when you are in a system you need to be cut-throat. This is a clever argument, but some measures of decency need to be taken in the system to achieve personal goals without doing harm to yourself and others.
Fighting for peanuts will leave you with an empty bag with the peanuts on the floor and that does no party any good in the long run. Sometimes it’s just better to hand the peanut bag over to the party you are fighting with and explore opportunities to find gold elsewhere – and believe me – there is plenty of gold out there waiting to be discovered.