Game face on
Level Up
A few months back, I switched my company for a better role and compensation. Having spent some 4-plus years in one organization gives you enough groundwork to finally fly towards new challenges and opportunities.
In my new organization, the Initial three months looked extremely comfortable, under control, and familiar. Whatever I was doing, I knew all of it and had seen all of it. But that is not why anyone would make a switch. Isn’t it? At least in my world, challenges keep me engaged with things and people.
Not able to be feel challenged enough sent me down the spiral where I started thinking about the credibility of my new role!
Six months down the line, I started to face few new and old challenges, but with a different set of people and in a different kind of environment. Suddenly, everything which was under control was no longer under control. And I was struggling and started to tip-toeing around people and situations. Every time someone took my name and I thought, “what now”.
I was getting a little unsure of whether I was the right fit now.
In three months from questioning the company fit, I went to question myself. I started to feel out of sync. Loyalty is not an issue with me because I have spent years working for companies. But I thought I overcame all of them. Then what could it be?
That is the things with humans, they fear what they can’t see or understand.
I started adding more of myself to the work, was working on every feedback, and was trying to build a rapport with my team, but nothing seemed to be working. Still, something somewhere was not enough. This has happened to the best of us.
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And just when, in the middle of everything, I remember one quote that I read somewhere,
Calmness is not something that you experience while doing yoga, calmness is what you should experience amid the chaos.
And it struck me: all these years into the grind is not to realize this is not where I want to be. The universe challenges you when you are ready for it, and will never give you more than you can handle.
In my childhood, my friend had this Mario game, and we were crazy about it. Sometimes I got to play with him for some 30 minutes. I don’t clearly remember, but I did go up to level five or six, but it took me a year to reach there. Meanwhile, my friend who had better access to the game completed all the levels. I also remember staying at one particular level for months — either I could not jump from a level or I could not run from turtles. I wanted to complete the game like my friend, but I eventually lost interest in the game and carried on with my life.
I was neither right at my third month nor at the sixth month anniversary. The mistake was, I thought this place was my destination or the other company I will escape to. These places where we spent so many hours are just levels in any game. I cannot skip a level to reach another. I have to go through the grind to understand the challenges, overcome them and not just survive, but to overcome them to the best of my ability. These obstacles were opportunities given to me to add yet another feather to my ever-evolving me.
Play to win, not to survive
Sometimes the challenge is not about crossing a level. You can be lucky and cross it after few trials and if ever you were given the same challenge again, you wouldn’t be able to do it.
The challenge was always about you. About learning how to cross the level by staying resilient amid the chaos. Even if you cross that level, it will never guarantee you a destination. You will just be moving to another level; so rather than dreading these levels and the grind, embrace it, enjoy it, learn from it, and move on — I wish someone would have taught me this as a kid.
