The Pursuit of Happyness

"Hey, there needs to be a spell check done", was the first reaction that I had when I saw the movie title. It said Happyness, and not Happiness.

Sometime I wonder the change in scenario; where a studious student during my times was having all set of dictionaries - English-English, English-English-Hindi, English-English-Malayalam and all sorts of combinations. We were encouraged (rather threatened) to look up these heafty stuff to find the correct spelling and meaning. So we knew most of the spelling correctly. But this generation just hits the spell-check button and bingo all the wrong spellings are corrected and also the system throws up the suggestion for grammar too. So the result is, if you have to write down something in a paper, the student is blank regarding the spelling.

The point I was trying to tell is, the movie is good. And, I'm not trying to give a review of that. What left me thinking is that, what made that guy to rise up in life? Money? Wealth? Luxury? (By the way, money and wealth are two different things).

My earlier boss used to tell me, "Money is the only motivator for most of them". I look back. Did I work with all the enthusiasm just because I got the money I wanted? Mostly, No.

Money is an attraction, but cannot be a motivator, I believe. When somebody takes up a new job offer, money, of course, is an attraction. Once inside and on the job, the attraction remains for sometime. But after sometime he/she gets used to it, and its no more an attraction or motivation.

The driving factors might be a sense of satisfaction of doing something good, some recognition of good work, promotion, etc. Some folks may not be so focused on the satisfaction part, as long as the month-end sms comes from the bank. But here too, its not motivation, its complacency.

Another breed just cannot stand the concept that you are working 'for' someone, and starts up something new which gives him/her a kick. May be 5% have this mindset, but only 0.5% get ahead and do something. Others do a SWOT analysis, and finally decide to stick on to the month-end sms lifestyle.

Here, one thing to note is that all have some wishes, desires and dreams.

All of us have lot of wishes - like, "I wish this country had better infrastructure", "I wish I had XYZ car", "I wish I had a monthly income of Rs. ABC".

If you ask them very firmly, "Do you really want all these things?", they might answer, "Well, not really. I am okay with the current setup". They are driven by the fear of failure and since they are not ready to move out of the comfort zone, they remain where they are with their wishes.

A few in this group think of doing something about it. They analyse the pros and cons, see what they could possibly do, and see a few options. They are turning a wish into a higher level - a desire. But many stop at this level, due to the lack of confidence, complacency, or no proper guidance.

Very few actually turn these desires into their dreams, set goals, and chart an action plan to achieve them. And they make a difference to their own life, and to life of people who are associated with them.

What I felt is that its not important what the dreamers achieve, whether it is a plush house, a few luxury cars, or a hefty bank account. If the person is focused, and sensible, it is more important on what he/she, as an individual, as human being, become in that process of achieving his dreams.

If we look around we will see people in all the categories, and which set do each of us belong to?

Cheers!