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Friends – the importance of having them. by Manoj Abraham, VP & Head , EMEA - Business Development, CGSL

Friends – the importance of having them.

By : Manoj Abraham, VP & Head , EMEA - Business Development, CGSL
Industry : Banking
Keywords :

Success

Friends

Importance

Work-Life Balance

Having

Priorities

Activity:  2 comments  266 views  last activity : 07 06 2010 20:18:04 +0000
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There’s nothing really new about this topic – all of us have friends and all of us like having friends. However, recently I had an experience which impacted me significantly and therefore thought that I’d share the same with all of you.

Sometime in August, I received a call from one of my old engineering batch mates who I was last in touch with when I passed out of campus. We compared notes and exchanged nos and eventually, decided to hold an impromptu reunion of some of us, who were pretty close in campus. Trawling through a list of names that we could come up with and an email to each of them, resulted in 4 of us deciding to meet, since we were in Mumbai and had free time on the same day.

When we met, the conversation started off with the inevitable comments about appearances, the balding head, the expanding midriffs, the places we work in, our families and the cars we drive. Eventually, we progressed to anecdotal recollections about the good times we had and the fun we had. It was then, that one of us decided to raise a question. He asked: ‘Are we really successful? Are we really happy? ‘ – mind you this is a batch of grads who passed out in 1992 and therefore, 16 years down, it is indeed a relevant question to raise. This was also a group which had a consultant, some bankers and a businessman.

All of us except the businessman felt that we had fallen somewhere behind some of our batch mates, lost out on opportunities and generally had some ground to make up quickly, before we entered middle age ( yes, we still thought of ourselves as young..! )

The businessman however summed up the situation differently. He said: Each of us have reached a situation in life where we have our own properties (in some cases more than one), happy families, growing kids, and a lifestyle which definitely was aspirational when in campus. Why then, were we still caught up with the feeling of not being successful enough? The answer was obvious – we all had reference points and in most cases, the reference points, once equaled or overtaken, had changed to the next aspirational reference point. All we need to do was to check out progress against our own goals and decide whether we were successful and the answer in all our cases was a yes.

The businessman then raised another question: Have you achieved your goals of quality time with the family, enough time raising the kids, moulding their opinions/personalities – the answer this time around was a resounding NO.  

Therein lies the problem that all of us face. I am not an advocate for taking it easy and getting complacent about our professional aspirations – after all, we need to keep setting new goals to ensure that we progress to the next level professionally. However, what I carried home after that meeting was a simple task: Set goals in personal life and evaluate yourself against the same as well.  After all, THAT is the investment we need to make today, to ensure that our children grow into successful people, our family bonds get stronger and our married lives get richer. Make no mistake – our parents did that, and that is the single biggest reason, that we have achieved the levels of success that we have, that we are the people we are, today.

 

That, in essence is the importance of friends as well – catch up with your old friends once in a while, relax, unwind without any qualms, share your innermost fears and thoughts and refresh your perspective on life. It helped me for sure; guess it would work for all of us as well.
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2 comments on "Friends – the importance of having them."
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  Commented by  Ahmed Sultan, Senior Tourism Consultant, UltraConsultants    | 04 30 2009 04:58:42 +0000 
Friends are the most important ingredient in this recipe of life.
  Commented by  Dayanand Deshpande, Senior Consultant, Ernst & Young    | 04 15 2009 08:34:45 +0000 
We all get so busy with the work that we forget to spend time with our families & friends. People work day night to achieve their goals but they forget that their primary goal is to keep themselves happy by keeping their family and friends happy. So spend time with your family and friends. Share and enjoyed with them.

Friends, keep in contact with them. They might know you more than you do...

Thank you Manoj for sharing you r experience with us...
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Thought provoking. Thanks for sharing
There’s nothing really new about this topic – all of us have friends and all of us like having friends. However, recently I had an experience which impacted me significantly and therefore thought that I’d share the same with all of you. Sometime...
Would rate it as one of the most useful ones I have read. May also be, since I agree with each word written out here.
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