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We are so mindful whilst spending our money as we assume that messing up our finances will lead us into utmost trouble and that we would have to live in despair.
On the other hand, there are a countless number of wealthy people who have everything except peace. Therefore, they live in utmost misery. By investing your strength and energy in thoughts that are considered as battles, you will be pressurised to entertain a battle that was not at all yours.
Let me share a story with you that further explains this very important life lesson which in my opinion can reduce by 50% of the stress you are going through now.
At the time when I was the head of marketing at a leading company in Sri Lanka, there were many who were challenged by my way of thinking about life and my highly effective, efficient style of working. In order to overcome this, they opted for the shortest route of trying to destroy my focus and my career.
The very first thing they did was criticising my past life. What they expected out of it is for me to get distracted and lose my focus on work. So that they can weaken my performance to push me to do something rash which may become a threat to my job security.
I was wise in handling this battle accurately. The first thing I did was considering that challenge as something that I should not battle. I decided not to invest my fighting armoury and my capabilities such as thoughts, words, defending and counter-attacking acts on my enemies as I consider them as blind beggars.
What would you do if you found a blind man in the street? You will be compassionate towards him, even if his stick strikes, you would not utter a word as he is in need of help. Furthermore, if you see a blind man, who is also a beggar, then the empathy and compassion that arises towards him are even greater.
You will feel that he is not only blind but he also has nobody to take care of him.
Identifying your enemy will certainly solve half of the challenge. A lion will never be earnest nor prepared to fight with a donkey. Nevertheless, if the lion sees the donkey as a tiger, then it will surely fight with that donkey who has been labelled as a tiger. Therefore, every time those whose intention was to destroy my career attempted to do something;
I didn’t take any notice of what they wanted to do to me. I was aware that a good fighter should focus on real battles which are challenging his own vision in life. I must not battle with blind beggars.
Therefore, choose your battles wisely. Instead of fighting against them, I constantly invest my abilities, skills, talents, capabilities and resources to completely focus on the key performance indicators of my job.
By implementing this plan I was able to further leverage the distance between me and my opponents who eagerly attempted to destroy my career. Since I was focusing on my performance instead of focusing on them, I began to prosper day by day in my profession.
I progressed to become one of the best in the industry. Just think for a moment, what if I had invested my resources in them and not on improving my career? I would have certainly failed to perform in my job which would have eventually led me towards losing my employment, which was precisely the intention of my opponent.
If you were provided fifty (50) mango plants, fertile land and a plot of land at the beach to plant the mango plants. I am sure you will plant all the plants in the fertile land and not at the beach, as you are aware that planting them at the beach would be wasting the valuable resource you acquire on a ground that is incapable of growing plants.
It is exactly what I am trying to explain, if you choose your battles wisely and ignore the irrelevant battles right from the beginning it would not have an impact on your growth. You could live a stress-free life. If not, you will be wasting your valuable time that could have been spent on your family, children, friends and nature rather than on some useless crowd of people who have no positive impact on your performance.
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Suppose you are to go on a distant journey, you must make sure that you take adequate water and food to keep you alive until you reach your destination. If by any chance you give your food to a few stray dogs the night before you go on your journey, you would be left with nothing to take on your journey.
Therefore, make sure you do not waste your energy and resources, be focused on your original manual on investing them fruitfully. Do not deviate from it and listen to everything you hear that can refocus your attention. I know of a lady, who was struggling in life, yet she began to look after forty (40) stray dogs. Looking after stray dogs is a wonderful act of kindness, but if it is done by compromising the requirements of your loving family, then it is a useless venture.
You cannot leave your children in hunger just because you need to feed the stray dogs.
Setting aside eight (08) hours of our precious time for a good sleep leaves us with just sixteen (16) hours for productivity. Unfortunately, many people invest half of their productive time thinking of why the next-door neighbour did not say good morning or why your colleague frowned at you or about the trishaw driver who yelled at you for driving decently.
Similarly, I used to get distracted during such situations due to my immaturity but now even if someone yells at me even when I have done the right thing, I choose to say sorry. Pride is a joy killer; we should never let it take control over us. 70% of the battles we go through are a result of our pride.
Over the years I have realised the necessity of understanding that a donkey’s needs are different from a lion’s needs, therefore they must be fed accordingly. Once I blindly shared the dream sketch of my three-story mansion with a person whom I considered a good person.
She had taken it for fun and said “He doesn’t have a penny to scratch his back but he boasts of a three-story mansion”. I refused to hurt myself and I considered her a blind and defective thinker. By stating as “Blind Beggars” I actually mean that even though the person has good eyesight they cannot understand the beauty of life and even though they are wealthy they are poor in values, hence they constantly seek or beg professionally for acceptance, appreciation, exaltation and recognition, all of which are fertilisers of pride.
Choose your battles wisely and guide your children to walk away from unnecessary battles which would deviate them from their original dream. As for the people who attempted to destroy me, today, they are struggling in life. As for myself and my family, I am flying high as an eagle from height to height.
The fundamental truth that you must fathom in life is that life will never be easy, you need to become stronger each day so that you can live in peace even under pressure.
In order to refresh your mind on this topic, please refer to my previous article written on “Don’t Buckle Under Pressure”.
Whenever I encounter a pressurising situation, I sit down for a moment and silence myself to make sure that I train myself to be still before a challenge.
Then I decide if the situation should be considered a battle or if it is a piece of litter that should be thrown into the trash bin so that I can move ahead with my dreams. For comments: philipnehri@chandanalepa.lk / voice: 0779 526 496