Meaningful Expression !!!

Life is absolutely unpredictable, which alomost all of us have realised in past four months. There is tremendous fear in the air & everyone is neighbored around the negativity. It's easy to preach but actually very tough to stay away from it. 

This negativity can be attributed to three major reasons. One of which is the fear of being judged by the outside world, another is comparison with others & the biggest one is lack of meaningful expression in life. 

Normally, we are very much bothered about accreditation by others. For example, we want to show off our lifestyle to others & want an unsaid accreditation that our lives are worth living. Apart from that, we want to affiliate ourselves with organisations who have excellent brand names, it may be a corporate for job or an educational institution for degree. We just measure our success in terms of external validation & end up having a disease called as lifestyle disease. 

Along with to this, we also have the habit of comparing ourselves with others. The true measure of our success lies in what others have gained rather than what we have gained. Every now & then we relate ourselves with others. This happens because we have been trained this way since school days & it continues at work place also, hence this trait goes natural and ultimately becomes part of our basic nature. We fail to identify the real reason of our unhappiness, which is on account of an unsaid comparison we do with others. We blame others for this, whereas the actual problem resides in us. As rightly said by Ghalib "ताउम्र ग़ालिब ये भूल करता रहा, ताउम्र ग़ालिब ये भूल करता रहा, धूल चेहरे पर थी और मैं आइना साफ़ करता रहा"

Let's come to the third & the biggest culprit, that is lack of meaning. In life there are three basic cycles, one is organizational & second one is career cycle & in between both the cycles, we have our lifecycle. The organisation has limitation of its own, it can't give everything to individuals, what he/she may need. Hence, one can't fulfill all his/her expectations just by organizational successes.  At each stage of life, some or the other thing would give meaning to individuals. For example, a new job & some money would give satisfaction in the initial stage of life, then after few years, position or grade would give satisfaction. Post few years, there comes a monotony stage in career, now money or position would no more give dopamine shift to human brain. It simply replicates the concept of marginal utility, the more you have it, the lesser you desire it further.

During this stage of life, we as individuals are so much involved in jobs that we don't have vocabulary or topics other than our work. We become bore & start blaming our work for that. This is the stage where organizations fail in giving meaningful expression to individuals in life. Over a period of time, we start feeling that we are wasting our lives whereas don't have enough courage to do something new.

Checkmate !!!!! 

Here comes the need of doing something which would make us feel valuable in our own eyes, this may be a social service, a new sport, study, reading, hobby development or freelancing. Rather than cursing our organizations or blaming our fate, it's better to introspect. This will give us new vocabulary, new people, newness & the most importantly a meaning to life. There is a concept called as portfolio career to overcome the monotony of career & to have a meaningful expression in life.The concept explained is as below

Portfolio Career 

As students, we’re familiar with the experience of juggling multiple jobs to make ends meet — babysitting, math tutoring, photography, part time summer jobs. They’re all part of that stage of young adult life where income always falls just short of expenses, and our only hope for survival is the ongoing hustle. The basic definition of “the hustle” is finding creative ways to afford living. According to urban dictionary, it requires “the courage, confidence, self-belief, and self-determination to go out there and work it out until you find the opportunities you want in life.” It involves identifying gaps, capitalizing on basic skills, and sometimes taking up the less-than-optimal tasks that only make sense because you have nothing to lose. Most young people can relate to the hustler mentality in some way, but we seldom consider how it shapes our future careers.Rather than viewing the hustle as an uncomfortable yet necessary part of growing up, what if we took these lessons learned in the art of getting by and applied them to how we approach our professional lives?

Job market trends point strongly in one direction: the future of work is uncertain, fragmented and demanding. The emergence of the portfolio career is a clear indication of this trend.

A portfolio career, by definition, is one which consists of multiple part time jobs. Sounds familiar? Instead of weekend gigs and temporary positions, however, a portfolio career could be a full time commitment which comprises a balance of freelance work, consulting, personal projects, board membership and other activities that demand expertise under flexible conditions. It’s important to note that it is not the same as multitasking. In fact, most people who’ve embraced the portfolio career do it precisely because it gives them more autonomy to direct their focus where they want. Time management and organization are thus crucial for personal accountability and success. More and more people are turning to portfolio careers, or the “gig economy,” as a long-term lifestyle choice which provides them with the autonomy to choose how they work. Some seek a better work/life balance. Some do it for the opportunity to use and develop multiple skill sets. Some do it for autonomy so that they — rather than some corporate employer — control their fate. Some do it to follow divergent passions or for personal growth. Some do it for the pace and constant change. And some do it as a second career after retiring early from full-time employment, simply seeking a new challenge and greater fulfillment. For whatever reasons, the portfolio career is on the rise and has become a more viable option through the boom of the freelance, remote work market.So what does this mean for those of us at the midlife of our careers? Here’s some advice on how we can prepare for the future of work today.

Diversify skillset. The top two skills in demand, unsurprisingly, are tech skills and soft skills. People who know how to work with data and use technology to their advantage, yet also display the emotional intelligence to work well with teams and navigate complex social systems, will always come out on top. Employers care less about your degree, and more about the tangible skills you can offer and the work experience you bring to the table. Now it is a good time to pick up online courses in programming, business, design and communication. It’s a small present investment of time and effort that can yield valuable returns later on in life.

Be comfortable with experimentation. One of the consequences of the portfolio career is higher turnover. Employees won’t settle for the same monotonous work if they can find attractive options elsewhere, so employers are being encouraged to provide opportunities for role experimentation outside of more traditional vertical trajectories. This establishes easier pathways for internal job moves that allow employees to take advantage of their changing skills and interests without having to undergo the risk of changing companies. Chances are, you will be working multiple roles within a range of industries over the next few years. Take advantage of each experience and use it to further diversify your skillset.

With this, would want to close by saying that, the role of education is to bring about confidence in a person & it should give meaning to life rather than just being a tool of external validation to stay competitive in the rat race !! 

Thanks & Regards,

Nirav Ajmera