The Mindset !?
One of my friends once mentioned, In order to be happy (in the sense of achieving), you have to compete with others. If you compete with yourself, you will never be satisfied. I never agreed. For me competition is always with oneself. Setting targets and achieving them. Not beating the benchmarks set by others, but setting once own. I always held the belief that competing with others only limits you to there capabilities and not yours.
Even now, whenever I hear, India should be like China or somewhere else. I always ask myself, why can’t we set our own targets. Why do we have to limit our capabilities to what other countries have already achieved. Why do we limit ourselves to play the catchup game.
I think its about time we changed our mindsets. The mindset of How we want to be, to What we want to be.
Dost,
I think you are correct that one should compete with oneself. In case of India being compared with China, the case is different. Just after Indian independence, India was far ahead to China in terms of economy. But look at their economies now, China has surpassed India in almost everything (except IT and related services). Since, the demography in both the countries is similar, it is often questioned that what went wrong with India. Chinese economy has been growing @ 9-10 % pa for the last 30 years . In contrast to this Indian economy has been growing @ 6 % (overall) and only since mid 90s. The result, China is now 3 times mightier than India. So, when China can do it, why can’t India? Setting targets without comparing with others may not be realistic. And the nature of the Indian Govt has always been that of apathetic. They have been setting targets for themselves for 61 years and see where they have reached. When Singapore, China, Korea, Japan were revolutionizing, what were the Indian policies? A theory in psychology “Social Comparison Theory” tells us that people tend to compare themselves with others who are similar and then form opinions. That is natural. Everybody does that. Look at the Olympics. You can’t set your own standards. Its all about breaking world records and outperforming others at the competition. If Indian athletes try to surpass China’s performance, I am sure they can win many more Golds.
Comment By Sachin, By mistake updated on the post titled
” A Quote !!”
In Response to Sachin’s Comment (Above)
The problem with setting goal for others performance is, the goal is always set for the other’s past performance. And never for its possibly future targets. The moment we set targets taking into account what the other might achieve in future, it is automatically setting targets which are our own.
The difference is
We should know where we want to be in the future, instead of knowing where we should have been now !!
You are right when you say you should compete with yourself. Competing with others and trying to be someone else – is a sign of stupidity.
Look at it like this: When you compete with yourself – you win, you lose. When you win, lot of others lose as well. Because when you become a better you, you surpass lot of others who were better than you. When you lose, no one knows, so its all fine.
People who do not have an imagination of their own think that India should be China, Mumbai should be Shanghai et al. The worst part of the mentality is that people think what they have done in the West is development and we are going to take at least 40 years to achieve what they’ve achieved. That’s pure stupidity. We should define what we want to be, what is good for us and what we don’t want to be. But again, India is devoid of creative people – and I’m an Indian saying that!
Now, take my advice. While you keep spreading your thoughts; start working on them as well. If you are already doing that – quadruple your aims (in size) and work on them. That’s more important.
Keep writing.
Best Wishes,
The Big K