If I ask a question to the kids whether they want a fulfilling life or not, I feel that almost 100% of the students will answer yes. If I ask another question what percentage of the parents are living a fulfilled life, answers may probably vary. However, most of us would agree that the answer is definitely not 100% and a majority of the students would agree that it may be less than 50% and probably far less than that. If all of us want to live a fulfilling life, then how is it so that the majority of us end up living a life of regrets and unfulfilled life.
I feel that the answer lies in the 3Cs. What are these 3Cs? They are Clarity, Confusion, and Conflict. Kids would be surprised and laugh at clarity being the reason for unfulfilled life. I would try to explain this with an example. We see many students preparing for civil service. While they are preparing for the civil services, they are absolutely clear of their dream and feel that if they get through the examination, that will be their biggest dream coming true. However, down the line, when we meet many of them after crossing almost half of their career, the majority of them feel dissatisfied about the service They wish their kids away from civil service. Why has such clarity about the career resulted in so much regret? When I talk to them, many of them have dissatisfaction due to their cadre, some due to service conditions, some due to transfers, some due to late working hours, some due to distant and remote places of posting, and some due to bureaucratic hierarchy. There may be many more reasons for dissatisfaction. But the core reason is that they had clarity about the career option due to the lack of awareness.
I can give another example. Many of us do love marriages, even going against the wishes of our families and parents. We are absolutely clear about our choice of a life partner when we enter into such relationships. However, there are many instances of divorce. In fact, if we ask a marriage lawyer, he would tell us that divorce in love marriages quite well competes with divorces in arranged marriages. This is another example where clarity leads to an unfulfilled life. Probably the core reason here too is the lack of awareness while making the decision. Thus clarity in a hurry, which is devoid of complete awareness may bring regrets in our lives.
There may be another reason for the clarity. It is the mental stories we make. Our mind is one of the most wonderful story makers. I remember one instance quite clearly. Once I discussed an office instance with one of my close friends. After around a year, when we were walking, he repeated the same story to me with quite significant deviations in the facts. He did not recall that it was me who told him the story. I recalled telling him the story and the correct facts. He would have told the story to many people and in the process, some of the facts would have got distorted and now he believed the distorted facts to be true. Many times, we are absolutely clear about our decisions but the decisions are based on our mental stories. We keep forming many such mental stories almost every moment related to rights and wrongs, good and bad people, useful and useless, and so many other things. Many such mental stories are based on third-party information, gossip, and most importantly our mind believes what it wants to believe. It creates all sorts of mental stories if it is insecure.
The second "C" is Confusion. We often make decisions in life in a state of confusion and these decisions result in regrets in our lives. There are gain two broad reasons for confusion. First, there is a lack of information in many cases. In the world of misinformation and propaganda, it is not easy to get the right information. Most of the websites on the internet are full of information posted by interest groups and corporations to promote their interest. It is quite difficult to find true information. The second reason for confusion is misjudgment. There are many gaps in the logic. We often feel that we are very good at reason but reason itself has many biases that have a major impact on our decisions. For example, we have a confirmation bias. Once we make a decision, we tend to conform to that even if there is some realization that it is wrong. That is the reason why it is quite difficult to get out of tough situations, friendships, and relationships. If we spend say one year in a relationship and realize that it was a bad relationship, we tend to drag the same because we do not want to accept that we wasted one year due to a wrong decision.
The third "C" is conflict. We often get many conflicts in life. We often get conflicting choices. For example, a conflict between a good friend and career, money and power, going abroad for a better package vs staying with parents at a lesser package, eating healthy food vs tasty food. Life is full of many more such conflicts. Conflicts arise because we do not have the desired clarity on the meaning of life. That is why when it comes to decision-making, we encounter conflicts.
While we have three reasons for the unfulfilled life, we also have five Ms to live a fulfilled life. The first M is working on "Missing Pieces" of the stories. We get false clarity because we miss some pieces of the story. We are not aware of most of these missing pieces because we remain unconscious of a significant part of our emotions. In the examples above, while deciding about careers, we make decisions just by being aware of one of the factors or some factors. Most of the students make decisions about their careers by just analyzing the packages. Actually what matters at the end of the day is the daily schedule, diversity at work, opportunities for promotions, fairness in performance appraisal, security, freedom of speech, fair treatment at the workplace, healthy work-life balance, and so on. That is the reason why if we work on the missing piece of the story, our decisions may be more sustainable. We need to continuously observe our behavior and feelings and be aware about the unconscious mind as most of these missing pieces lie deep in our unconscious mind.
In fact, to help students make decisions about their careers, we have compiled a book based on the Google form received from around 300 participants from different professions/occupations. The book can help the students analyze different career options from a wider perspective and make more fulfilling choices for their careers. The book is available at the following link:
https://observationwithawareness.blogspot.com/2024/05/career-guidance.html
The second "M" is working on the "Mental stories". As discussed with an example, most of the mental stories get formed because we are not aware while discussing. If we remain aware and keep examining the truth behind what we speak, our brain has an immense capacity to correct itself. We need to examine continuously whether we are placing undue premium on any unverified information. We also need to examine whether we are misstating certain facts in order to gain some mileage. Initially, it appears as if we are in control of the situation, However, we soon get into the trap of our own lies as the brain starts believing its own lies. For example, if we tell our parents that we are finding it difficult to study in order to avoid studies, soon our brain starts believing the difficulties and such a belief has negative impact on our studies.
The third "M" is working on "Misinformation" that results in confusion. Present day world is full of propaganda. That is the reason why we need to be aware to avoid falling into the trap of misinformation. Different corporates and people are selling huge misinformation to sell their products. With social media, misinformation spreads very fast. Awareness is the key to avoid falling into the trap. We need to learn to ask the right questions. Advertisers use different techniques to sell their products. We see false advertisements by many coaching institutes. If we remain aware, observe, and ask the right questions, we may very well avoid such misinformation.
The next "M" in the process is working on "Misjudgement" that results in confusion. Our brain is quite intelligent and yet makes many misjudgments. We need to be aware of different biases logic has, Once we become aware of these biases, we can work on those. We need to read the manual before operating an instrument. This brain is one of the most complicated instruments we have and therefore we need to read its manual before putting it to use. We need to know more about our brain and some basic books on the functoing of the brain may help us greatly in this regard. Of course, we need to practice getting over the biases in our daily lives.
The last "M" is "Method" to resolve the conflicts. Students are often told different methods to solve the questions. Then they are asked different questions to practice the same method. Do the students focus on the solution or the method? Obviously the method. The solution comes on its own. Different students may get the same solution using different methods. That is how life is. We just need to focus on the method or process. If we focus on the outcomes, our attention gets divided that results in conflicts. We just need to observe ourselves to find our natural strength. For example, few students have natural strengths around logic, while some are good at communication, some at creativity, and some think out of the box. We just need to choose the career that offers us opportunities to do what we like rather than what we get. If we get a career in something that we like to do, the rest of the things such as money and positions will fall in place. On the contrary, if we decide career based on the output i.e. the package and positions, we may end up doing something the whole of our lives that we do not like. That results in probably the greatest of frustration and unfulfilment.
Thus, we have three Cs Clarity, Confusion, and Conflicts which may make our lives full of regrets. But at the same time, we also have the five Ms namely working on "Missing pieces" of the story, working on our "Mental stories", working on "Misinformation", working on "Misjudgments", and focussing on the "Methods". All these five Ms put together may make our lives fulfilling. So we need not be afraid of the 3 Cs and just focus on the five Ms with awareness. I wish all the best to the students to live a fulfilled life.
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