Expect more

Expect more....

I do not recall when was the first time when I started believing in the phrase "Your Achievement Is Only As Big As Your Dreams Are..." It was probably in 2001, when I tried a hand at a multi level marketing programme. I continued that effort whole-heartedly for around two years. The results however were not encouraging.

Were my dreams too small ? I do not think so. I had...rather have... huge dreams. A mansion within Mumbai, a Honda car, a second home at a hill station...list goes on. So what went wrong?

Probably lack of effort was one of the reasons. Here too, as I mentioned earlier, I had put wholehearted efforts. So I do not see this as a reason.

After much thinking I have realised that having big dreams & putting efforts is not enough. There has to be a habit of expecting the results. Along with the dreams, our expectations too must be high. We must develop a habit of expecting most from our interactions; be it with individuals or organisations. We must also develop art of putting forth our expectations in a manner where these are understood clearly and are taken seriously.

Many a failures of under-achievements could actually be attributed to not keeping proper expectations from people or organisations. A poorly communicated expectation can never yield the desired result. I have prominently experienced this in each walk of my life.

In professional life, I deal with a variety of people. Variations in age, experience, qualification, attitude, culture, languages spoken etc. by the people I interact with makes it very important to have a skill to bring myself to that individual's level of maturity to be able to communicate properly. I cannot expect same results from a 18 year old ITI trainee and 20 year old engineer. I cannot expect same speed of execution from a younf engineer and an experienced colleague. Also, I cannot communicate my expectations to a 18 year old ITI trainee in the same way as I would communicate to an engineer. I cannot communicate my expectations to a young inexperienced engineer in the same manner as I would communicate with an experienced colleague.

Having said that, the fact remains that I must have clear expectations to be able to get results through any of these. If I have limited expectations from any of these, it is obvious that they will give only that much result or even less. It is therefore imperative to develop the art of expecting the right things to a right extent from the right people.

I have experienced this in personal life too. I had been to Akkalkot Swami Samarth Mandir, in May 2006. Me, my wife & daughter had traveled 490 Km from Mumbai explicitly for Darshan of Shri Swami Samartha. When we reached the Mandir at 12 noon, the doors of the shrine were closed for some routine reasons & we were told doors will open only after 3 pm. We had planned for our return journey from Solapur to Mumbai, by train, at 4pm. Distance between Solapur & Akkalkot is one & half hours, by road !!

I managed to persuade the priests to allow us to have a darshan. We could have the Darshan at 1pm since the priests were convinced of our dilemma. At this juncture had I not expected the priests to relent, we would probably have missed the return train.

Another experience had come when we visited Tirupati Balaji temple in 2001. We reached the hill top in the evening. We had return train tickets to Mumbai for the next evening. However the queue for the Darshan was so long that we were given Darshan timings of a day after !! For a moment I felt as if we lost all the reservation money, since canceling the tickets from the hill top was impossible. However when I persuaded the people at the Darshan counter I realised that there was a railway counter at the hill top !! I could peacefully cancel our return journey tickets & stay there for the next two days !! Here too if I had kept to myself & not expected the local authorities to help, I was in for a good amount of loss.

Hence, expecting the right things, to a right extent from the right people is as important as our dream is !!