Rama Moondra

“The things you learn in maturity aren’t simple things such as acquiring information and skills. You learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior. You learn not to burn up energy in anxiety. You discover how to manage your tensions. You learn that self-pity and resentment are among the most toxic of drugs. You find that the world loves talent but pays off on character. You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against you, they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you – a lesson that is at first troubling and then really relaxing.”

Long ago, it was sent to me by Chief, one of the finest enriching relations almighty has blessed me with. Yesterday when Jatin sent me this entire article, I was delighted to read it in totality. Jatin has always been one of the most knowledge sharing person I have met and thankfully preserve too.

The ways you can tackle a midterm crisis are listed here…try them and trust me…It works. I am around for any help.  Write me on www.facebook.com/ramamoondra.

Pause statue.

It’s a good idea to just stop everything for a while. Take a paper and a pen. Now write all your strengths…no ifs and buts please, ask yourself who you really are. Create a personal development plan on how you would want to leverage your best capabilities. Talk to people you can and find various avenues to change. You or your job may need an overhaul, fresh approach.

Self Awareness

Talk to someone you trust to find out what is it that you really want to be, in your life and in your career.

Re-Learn

Start something new. May be skill building or may be any hobby.Refresh, renew and learn. It has helped me a lot when I learnt to write…it was and still is pure hobby,just that I am able to connect more people with me by the media.

Social Network

Be seen. The new word of mouth is social media. Be on various sites..Connect with old bosses, new friends, lost colleagues, recent recruits..Network is mantra of success.

My apologies for posting it late by a day.

So, moving on from Quarter Life Crisis and hitting midlife and career crisis now. I am back to my writing as I sure know what a midlife crisis looks like.

As one of my precious readers, Aditya V Singh puts it, “Revisiting childhood and adolescence to peel off latent aspirations is desired  while one reaches the midterm of career. Those aspirations need to be pursued passionately one after another for taking life to another orbit. Lot of courage & conviction will help resurrect life or crisis as never before.”

There are a few things in life that one has very little chance of escaping. Heartbreaks back pain, banging a car, losing on the stock market or having a mid- life and career crisis. So how does one know that it is around the corner or you are stuck into one?

What to expect each day at work gets more and more predictable: you know exactly what you will be doing any given minute of your work day. Your challenges, your responses, your options, your actions are all predictable. At the end of the year you can pretty much predict what your boss will say about your performance, you know what your bonus is likely to be and you know what your career rewards will be. The learning has stopped: you haven’t learnt anything new in a while. What you are doing is more or less something that you have been doing all along.

To top it all, you suddenly feel your life is so routine and mundane at all places. You have not made new friends for long & do not have enough time to speak to old ones.

You know the job is not keeping you happy and you do not have enough knowledge of how to find what to do.

Recently someone contacted me for his career charting and growth plan and he listed his strengths (first part of the course) and never called back. I knew what had happened so my text read clearly,” Scared to know yourself?” The response was YES.

You have got into your comfort zone. You know that you are good at what you do but you also know, deep inside, that the next step requires you to learn new skills, to get used to being uncertain, unsure and learn to face fear and failure all over again. And you just can’t seem to be able to muster the energy to do all of this .You wait and expect the organisation to appreciate and leverage what you have already proved yourself in. This does not happen. You feel cheated and angry within yourself.

How and what to do..I will be back day after, not tomorrow. Keep connected.

For the first time a guest writer is on my blog. I am proud and happy to do so since it comes from one of the most important persons of my life. This is from Ashish Golcha.

So here it for you ..first write up on Mid term Career and Life Crisis.Three post series..

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn’t know and may not like.You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don’t recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren’t really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job… and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you.

Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn’t. One minute,you are insecure and then the next, secure.

You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay
where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.You begin to think a companion for life is better than a hundred in the shack and for once you would not mind standing tall for that special someone which otherwise you had never thought of until now.

You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself… and while winning the race would be great, right now you’d just like to be a contender!

We call it the “Quarter-life Crisis”
Contributed by Ashish Golcha. Edited by Me