What's been happening the past year?! February 2007-February 2008 update!
Friday, March 21, 2008
Hello everyone (if anyone's actually still reading this blog of course!),It's been a while since I put up my last posting with any bit of substance (probably a year now), primarily cos I have been busy with work and life in general. I've now been able to find time to actually write something. I don't particularly know what to write about - abit rusty, but perhaps start off with a few lessons in life I have learned over the past year:
1) Take life one step at a time. Things can get stressful, but only if you allow it to get you stressed. Always have a life outside of work to escape to, either friends (both outside and work colleagues) or importantly family. They provide support and an anchor from the stresses of life.
2)Work is work and you should never be defined by what you do or what position you hold. I read somewhere that you should be able to take your work seriously, but take yourself lightly. This is very true. Some people get their ego so entangled with their job positions they start shitting on the little people because they hold a high position at work. As for me, I am defined by my achievements, my education, my family and people I love and care about, and myself. Not by my bosses or people who I do not consider as part of my life. Importantly only one person defines me: Myself.
3)There are unprincipled people everywhere, and many who will probably cross paths with you. Perhaps YOU are unprincipled yourself (although you'll never admit it and explain it away with some far fetched rationale). Unprincipled people believe they are better than other people because they see their principles as far more superior than yours. They also try to supplant your principle with theirs. They also have this narcissistic tendency to play god and if you're in the work place with such a person, you'll be privy to unprincipled actions that make anyone with any sense of work and professional ethics throw up violently.
4) Never choose to be a victim. some people, when they get victimised, wallow in being the victim. Don't. You do yourself a great disservice if you do so. Pick yourself up, be proactive (in Stephen Covey's sense) and choose NOT to be a victim. And choose to be all that is positive and get your focus centred on good principles of life.
5) Everyone has their own self agenda. Some want to be rich, some want to be the CEO, yet others want to be Datos and Pehins. EVERYONE have their own self serving agenda. But when you put a man in charge of an organisation who do not look out for the welfare of the company, its future and its people, then you're in trouble. Governance is not about doing away with self agenda and interest but with aligning self interest and agenda with the overall larger goals of the company.
6) You'll never really appreciate the importance of professionalism in the workplace until you've work with someone, perhaps a boss, who has none. You'll never truly appreciate the simplicity in life until you meet someone who is ethically and morally corrupt, self serving and will do anything (and I mean EVERYTHING) to satisfy their delusional sense of grandeur to achieve ambitions that seem more like the dreams of narcissistic madmen than anything else. You'll never truly appreciate continuing education and life long learning for yourself until you work for a boss who thinks he knows everything, but truly knows nothing.
7) Last but not least, if you're told to do anything unprincipled, unethical, and sometimes outright illegal at work, you ALWAYS have a choice. If you choose to say Yes, then you've made your bed , so lay in it and suffer whatever consequences that comes along. If you choose to say No, then you've also made your decision, and also suffer whatever consequences is dished out by the powers that be that requested you to do so in the first place. At the very least though, the right choice means you can sleep at night and be able to tell your children with some sense of pride that the world can be a better place, simply because you can always choose not to partake in evil machinations designed by morally corrupt individuals.
There. Catharsis... one year's worth ....