This morning I was inspired to share some ideas that I consider relevant to help some friendly people who try every day to survive in this turbulent sea of work and sometimes get frustrated by not seeing their dreams and aspirations achieved. I have wanted to speak of accomplishment and not of success because success is momentary, it is a temporary event just like failure and generally it is an interpretation of reality. However, professional fulfillment, in the case that concerns us, is a state that is achieved and remains in us, encouraging us to continue.
Feeling fulfilled is feeling at peace with the goals achieved, having forgiven our failures, feeling useful and loved before ourselves. It is a feeling that is not in danger because it is not a step from which we can fall.
This feeling is compared to when we turn one more year of life. Nobody can go back in time and take away what we have lived up to that age, or when we graduate from high school or university, it is impossible that they can return us to first grade of primary school, we are fulfilled !!
So, professionally, as time goes by, we feel that our professional experiences make us feel stronger and stronger and capable of achieving more and greater goals.
Clear objectives
It is always convenient to be clear about where we want to go, on this we almost all agree. What no one told us is that life will always give us different scenarios than the ones we imagine when we draw up our plan.
My wife, for example, began her medical studies, then left them to study languages, this opened the doors to work in an international pharmaceutical company where she came into contact with microbiology, today she is a student at the end of this degree and employed in a laboratory national, which validates the drugs that enter the country and are used in hospitals and clinics.
This is experienced on a daily basis, especially in Latin America where job opportunities are so low. You graduate as an engineer and end up working in a warehouse. The difference is that some perceive this as an opportunity to innovate in different fields and others feel eternally frustrated because they are not in their professional field.
No matter what scenarios life gives us, we must make our plan and modify it as many times as necessary without crippling our dreams and with increasingly clear objectives.
Faith
Nothing is possible without faith, whether religious or not, it is necessary to believe in what we have not seen yet. Faith drives us, encourages us and moves us not to give up on our businesses.
We must believe in what we are, in our capacity for fulfillment and in what we have not yet managed to be. Sometimes we must believe for the simple fact that others have also succeeded, often in much more difficult situations. Other times we must trust that, although nobody has ever done it, we will not be the first to propose new ways that sometimes seem crazy or impossible for others and ourselves. And that in case of not achieving it, we will have gained at least knowledge and experience.
When I still did not know how to drive, I had doubts if one day I could do it because it seemed very complex to me, until one day I thought: how is it that those drivers of huge trucks, which must be ten times more difficult to control, can know this than I do? I don't know, when many times they are not even high school graduates. Then I understood that it was a matter of faith, decision and trust in me. I enrolled in a driver's school and I have had my license for almost 20 years.
Discipline and order
For some reason that we don't yet understand, the human brain resists the idea that it must establish order and follow it in a disciplined manner. It is incredible that this is so, although we see examples every day that confirm this truth again and again: athletes follow an endless daily routine throughout their careers, in church the same prayers and rites are repeated all the time, the doctor tells us prescribes a drug that we must give at strict intervals and doses if we want to heal.
So in our career, we believe that we deserve everything because we have a title hanging on the wall. However, we do not fulfill basic tasks and elementary responsibilities such as punctuality, commitment, teamwork, collaboration, etc.
Today there are thousands of tools to help us be more and more efficient and effective in what we do, not to please the boss or achieve recognition and approval of the company, but to fulfill ourselves professionally, to become a better human being who values work and transmit optimism and encouragement to colleagues, supervisors and subordinates. This is professional fulfillment. Everyone wants to work with that non-conflictive, collaborative, efficient, happy and supportive person.
I arrive early, I have a clear schedule of my tasks for the day, if possible for the week and the month, I am clear about the responsibilities that I have with others and I do not make them wait or make them feel that I am doing them a favor by serving them, I know the objectives of the company and help to achieve them. All this within my human and professional possibilities, without negotiating my dignity and with the greatest of joys.
Training
We are not gods, we do not know everything, but we can learn a lot until the last day of life on earth. Perhaps that day, if we are open to learning, we will know the meaning of life that is possibly very distant from our current conception.
As that day arrives, we must realize that it is possible that we are not making progress in what we do because we lack training, we do not investigate or learn new things. We spend the day doing only routine tasks and when we don't understand something, we prefer to ask someone else.
Contradictorily, at this time, knowledge is the order of the day, much more at our fingertips. Information networks are broader and more dynamic and, although it is true that they are more susceptible to error and falsehood, the richness of the debate and the contributions that are collected from it worldwide is no less real.
In addition, you can request information on the internet, consult various sources and compare, as well as review the opinions that are issued in the forums on the subject.
The point here is that we have no excuse for not knowing about some task or difficulty in our work. I have seen several professionals with deficiencies in the use of computer tools that would make their lives terribly easier when there are even video tutorials that explain step by step the solution to almost any problem.
I deeply believe that it is a problem in which laziness and ignorance combine to get us stuck in the same place while others take the best part of the cake, taking advantage of every crumb of knowledge in their favor.
One cannot imagine how the life of a person who has never operated a PC changes when he learns to use e-mail or a certain social network through the Internet. It's like waking up to a new world full of new opportunities and endless possibilities.
Time and patience
After time passes, everything seems magic, it is the secret ingredient that makes the seeds germinate and the fruits ripen. No process on earth escapes his relentless hand. Some things happen faster, others just give you the option to wait. After you are clear about where you want to go, you apply the prudent discipline to achieve it and educate yourself permanently towards this goal, it only remains to wait for time to do its job, to soften the hardened and harden the soft.
Patience is a virtue and must be constantly cultivated throughout our short passage on earth. Knowing how to wait is an art and it is the key to achieving many successes in life.
Don't take it so seriously
It is very convenient to know that despite all this, we do not have absolute control of any situation in our lives. We cannot assure with certainty even a single second of the future, therefore it is not worth getting bitter, suffering, stressed, angry, despairing. It is not worth taking everything so seriously, life is a kind of carnival as the song says. There is everything and for everyone, it goes up, down, sometimes it stops, speeds up, is uncontrollable.
The best we can do is play our part of the script and wait. If there is a change of roles then take the new script.
It is useless to try to change the role, or to believe that reality will wait for us sitting, or will go at our speed. It is we who must march at the pace imposed by reality and show that we are creative enough and that we have true faith to keep our dreams despite everything.
