Benchmarks

We live in a world which has more of almost everything there has ever been. More people, more ways to connect, converse, travel, consume content (like this article, hopefully). We are living in the most “abundant” generation there has ever been.

Yet, it always seems the internet is filled with people complaining about something or the other. So today, I would like to put things in perspective.

“If you always attach positive emotions to the things you want, and never attach negative emotions to the things you don’t, then that which you desire most will invariably come your way.”
― Matt D. Miller

If anyone has been a regular reader of my articles, they would know, I have a very love/hate kind of relationship with social media. Many of my friends are sort of done sending content to me, because they are just so unsure of whether or not I have uninstalled Instagram from my phone for the 58th time.

Because of this love/hate relationship maybe, God made me work for a company in the social media domain. Now, since I work in technology, I am almost always in touch with what’s going on in the space. I perform a customer facing function, so I am almost always in touch with the human aspect of things as well.

This is kind of why I love what I do for a living, because it helps me experience both sides of the spectrum pretty regularly.

Anyway, coming back to my love/hate relationship, the reason is I often come across content which makes me think a little too much. We see people living full lives, dare I say, abundant lives, and even they have their own troubles.

(Now whether or not those troubles are real is a question millions in their comments section fight over, but I digress.)

As I said, posts like these make me think, we came from a place where the next meal wasn’t guaranteed, and here we are, complaining about having to eat the same meal everyday. (Guilty as charged. Bottle guard isn’t the most appetising to me all the time, but I’m working on it).

The point I am trying to make is that abundance has caused us to become more entitled and less grateful.

But there is an interesting school of thought, which when examined carefully, makes a lot of sense.

A grateful person never runs out of abundance, while an entitled person can hardly ever enjoy abundance.

I am not saying this from a metaphysical or spiritual standpoint, but more from a practical standpoint (despite the fact that both disciplines contain more than enough evidence of the same).

Being grateful lets us focus on what we have. However, entitlement stems from a belief of deserving. While the belief of deserving is honestly not a bad place to be, because for a value driven person, this will lead to positive action. However, I am referring to the negatively connoted “entitlement”.

Today, entitlement is referred to as being privy to special treatment. For example: an entitled person feels they should be given the first spot in a queue of people waiting for Deadpool tickets, despite arriving late to the theatre.

Now, how can this person enjoy abundance? They can’t. They aren’t focussing on the opportunity to be able to watch the movie because they have enough money, time and faculties to do that.

They aren’t even focussing on the fact that they are there to watch the movie, and not win an imaginary social competition. How would they enjoy the abundance that is around them?

The point I am trying to make is, a small shift in perspective is all it takes for us to enjoy the abundance around us.

Now how do we get to this small shift in perspective? I have an idea.

As humans, we love benchmarking things. Take working out for example. Let’s say I ran for 5 minutes today, I will expect to run 5 minutes tomorrow as well. Over an extended period of time, the 5 minutes will turn to 6, then to 8, 10 and so on.

Slowly, the benchmark will continue to increase. And since that happens, any day I run less than my benchmark, I am able to run for a duration lower than my benchmark, I will feel I have underperformed.

Similarly, the abundance around us is also subject to being benchmarked. I came across a post from Ankur Warikoo. He mentioned going to the Google office and heard people complaining about having to eat Dal Makhani on consecutive days. He used impostor syndrome (or an effect similar to that) as a solution for this problem.

However, I disagree. We need to get to a place between impostor syndrome and entitlement.

We need to get to a place where we have a healthy sense of respect for ourselves and yet understand that the abundance around us is to be appreciated, but not taken for granted.

If you stuck around this far, thank you for your time. If you enjoyed this, share this with one friend of yours whom you think will benefit from reading this. Thanks for reading, and I will see you in the next one. 🙂