Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
Welcome back. Happy Friday morning to you today on the podcast. Again, I’m taking up a question that has come in from a long time and a daily listener of this podcast, asking me Srini, how are you, I wanted to ask you for some advice at my workplace, my manager has left and I have been given the role, which is a leadership role. With stakes. I know that I’m capable of delivering, but have been very anxious about what if I don’t keep up with people’s and my own expectations. Also, acknowledging that people are watching me perform in this position is making me nervous and worried. I just wanted to get your advice on how to keep my confidence up and perform at my best potential. Thanks as always, okay, so Okay, so let’s get into this.
First of all, it’s very difficult to live up to our own expectations. Living to somebody else’s expectations is even, it’s literally impossible. So I met people who keep on changing themselves, to meet the perception of others around them, because they love them, they take care of them, they care for them, they’re been born into situations that have been married into situations that have been hired into situations, I’ve seen people who just want to satisfy everyone. And that is the single biggest formula for pain, agony, and suffering in life, you try satisfy everyone, I guarantee you, you’re not going to achieve anything. So the only expectation we are talking about here is your expectation of yourself. And the answer to that is, is very obvious. You know, your strengths, you know, your weaknesses, you know, what you can do you know what you cannot do, doing something so that others will become happy, even though you’re not capable of doing, even though you know, it’s not the right thing to do, and satisfying them in the process. dissatisfying yourself, I think it’s not good, you can’t enjoy the position, you’re promoted, you can’t enjoy it. So over and over again, I keep saying this life is a happiness game.
You know, it’s not a wholesome happiness game, you cannot have a life full of happiness. But you will have a life within which you will have happy moments, your job is to create those moments. And there will be situations that will make you unhappy, there is going to be a pain, there is going to be agony, there’s going to be suffering, there’s going to be tears, there’s going to be heartbreaks all back. But your job is to keep looking and creating those happy moments. And if you spend eight hours a day doing this job, where you’re unhappy, you’re trying to please everyone, when will you please yourself? So I’m going to share a paradigm. Hopefully, this is helpful. This is the issue. There are two things going on here either you are comparing yourself with others. Somewhere deep within you think that you are not supposed to get this role, you got it. And now, because you never thought you should be getting it. Now you’re struggling to keep it. This is more like a combination of a self-image issue. And also a comparison issue. That means people are watching you are better and more skilled and qualified than you. These two things are self-images, I think the two issues are comparison-contrast, and self-image is somewhere in between these somewhere this issue is three things I want to share.
First and foremost is as a leader, your job is to shut down outside noise and give importance to your inside noise. You should shut down both by the way. But inside noise is the reason why you need to give importance to inside noise is that you need to figure out what is right for you to do so that others who depend on you. You’re doing right for them. So if you start giving importance to outside noise, noise is nice, then you’ll never be able to achieve what you are set out to achieve. This is the important thing. I’ll give you an analogy on this. People who go to see concerts, you know 50% of people who go to concerts, whichever concert it is, they want to listen to their favorite singer sing. 50% of people are good singers themselves.
And the chances are throughout the concert that singing. But for the singer to sing from the stage, the real performance on the stage they need to shut the audience down. He or she has to shut the audience down. And it’s the shutting is done by putting a louder microphone and a loud sound system so that everybody can listen to the singer the performer. That’s the only sound the audience is there to listen to. But individually, each attendee could be a good singer too. But they are not there to perform. So be loud, be clear, be precise, be decisive, because you are the leader, okay? The second one I think I already talked about, is people’s perception of you, you cannot change it, if they are going to say that you are bad, you’re bad anyway. If they say that you’re good, you’re good, I get that. But if you keep on catering to the perception, then it’s going to become a very difficult thing. I would restrain myself, taking my mind there to satisfy them. The last one, and I want to also, I think I already talked about this before on one of the podcast episodes, which is you need to affirm the gifts, the talents, and the strengths that got you here. Somebody’s dropping the ball, while you are here, who you are, what have you done to get here you have forgotten, the hardships, the pain that you’ve gone through the suffering, you know, everything that you invested all that you haven’t gotten here easily. So I want you to kind of give some importance to those things. So go deep into your gifts, your talents, and your strengths. Think about them. Every time you walk into a meeting, think about them every time you step into the office, think about them. And once you just go inward with those thoughts, everything else outside is going to look minuscule, as compared to what you have inside of you.
So this is a confidence issue. Yes, but I think it’s also a self-image issue. So hopefully this is helpful. If it is let me know. Those are my thoughts from the top of my mind. I could elaborate on this a little bit more but if I do that, then I may sound repetitive I don’t want to Okay, so that’s all for now. Wherever you are listening to this podcast episode, you all be safe and I’ll be with you as early as tomorrow. Stay tuned.