Success has many fathers, but failure is always a b ………… There are several times during this journey when there is a moment of joy, amongst all the despair times when you don’t question your motives, your goals and also why the hell are you doing all of this.
We seek or rather grab motivation as much as we get it, when we read stories of unicorns and successful companies and founders (Falguni Nayar started at 50 !! damn) it inspires us the whole day, sometimes the whole evening and even a really good one, till next day dawn.
But come morning at office and sure we will need another fix, to get us going. Caffeine will not cut it.
For most, the best motivation is, I would like to believe is customer satisfaction, validation and sales beats James Clear & Robin Sharma hands down. But there are days when, the meter does not tick at all . Aah those days ! and we look for more.
Something happened past few days which completely changed my perspective.
First — Nithin Kamath tweeted — If there was one life lesson that I could share, it would be: Nice guys never finish last. Your odds of getting lucky in a connected world like ours dramatically go up when you have people genuinely wishing you well. 😀 People root for you when you are genuinely nice to everyone you interact with without any expectation. It doesn’t matter if it’s a teammate, customer or a stranger. It doesn’t matter if you are working for someone or running a business.
Of course this stemmed from the bag of gems from Morgan Housel — “ The luckier you are the nicer you should be and the nicer you are the luckier you’ll be. “
Secondly and more importantly, the Padmashri awards, the stories, the recognition, the grace, the respect & their journeys. Whether it was Manjama Jogathi the first transgender or Jaswantiben Jamnadas Popat the 90-year-old co-founder of Shri Mahila Griha Udyog Lijjat Papad or 72 year old Tulsi Gowda: best known as Encyclopedia of Forest or seed mother Ramabai Popere.
Those single award moments are all within each a lifetime’s work of struggle and awe inspiring, goose bumpy feel. The simplicity of their conduct, the grace of their struggle & more importantly the content on their faces, inspite of the delayed recognition.
In some ways both these events were connected, these selfless individuals who have been at it, some for half a century and more are nice guys and they did not finish last, they made it.
Its our loss we learnt late and not enough about them.
But more importantly, I think we have no right to be short on motivation, or lakshya. There is something much deeper in a founders motive, something more selfless, something more personal, something with a much larger purpose.
I think we found ours.