When being good is not good enough in your professional or personal life!

Are you one of those, who face dilemma time and again that they do their best; but their desires or dreams do not come through? You are sincere, serious and honest in your endeavors; yet, do you encounter disappointments that results are seldom up to your expectations? Does that leave you wondering and often frustrating that while you have done all what you can, why you are being deprived of what you deserve? If yes, then here is what can help you to create better understanding of how things happen and how those can be changed!

First and foremost thing to understand is that if good does not work, then becoming bad is a very bad idea. Try whatever you want to with bad frame of mind, it would never ever serve your purpose. Often it has been seen that when good sense does not bring success, people lose their cool, doubt relevance of goodness and fall back on wrong ways – anger or anxiety, reaction or remorse, frustration or fear! Interestingly but ironically, bad or wrong ways suppress the realities and show up immediate results, which are either short lived or lead to bigger issues of other types now or later.

I have seen many bosses in corporates, who were initially very nice and empathetic to their employees. They would give them freedom and motivation. But later on, due to tough competition or faulty strategy, when their business units started performing poorly, they changed their attitude towards employees. They started to lose their temper for no rational reasons, became poor listener and disinterested in understanding the challenges employees were facing. Few bosses multiplied their woes, when top talents in their team started to desert them and the rest fell out of grace of the top management and faced a bad patch in their career! So, it is an illusion that being bad can ever pay off.

Then, being goody-goody is also bad. People like to be goody, when they want to avoid controversies or tough decisions. Therefore, they make attempts to please everybody and in that process, they lose their peace!

Real issue with most of us is that we believe or perceive that qualities and caliber that we possess are good enough! If things do not work out or results do not turn out as expected, we would put blame elsewhere – market conditions, coincidences, stroke of luck etc. This prevents us to reach to the root of the issue. Key lies in challenging our own perceptions or beliefs and comprehend where we are going wrong!

Indicators when your goodness is not good enough

1. When your repeat efforts do not yield expected results.
2. When your ideas or work does not elicit encouraging response from your target audience.
3. When even 15% of your perception about self does not echo in what others have to say about you!
4. When there are few takers of your talent!
5. When your supervisor, sub-ordinates or peers do not approach you for support or guidance!
6. When you manage to please one section of people especially seniors but displease another section.
7. When your near and dear avoid interacting with you.
8. When you often miss to do things, which matter to you.
9. When you are prone to making mistakes and do not implement the lessons learnt.
10. When you are low in patience and short in temper!
11. When you do not feel like looking into eyes of others and communicate or others do the same with you!
12. When your fellow beings keep a distance or disregard you!
13. When you are not getting sense of accomplishment in what you do!
14. When you don’t feel happy and get distracted too often.

Above list can help you to check whether you are good enough in your professional and personal life. If you are not, then you are likely to fail to get what you want.

What can you do to be good enough!

Please look at the parameter and emphasis on the right side of each point below:

1. It is good to be simple and straight forward; but more important is to be sound and strong mentally and physically!
2. Be flexible; but never falter in being firm!
3. Be compassionate; but equally important is to be courageous to take tough decisions!
4. Take lead in developing new ideas; but never lag behind to disseminate and communicate to as wide an audience as you can!
5. Be cordial; but never shy away from inevitable conflicts and discords!
6. Be respectful; but never repress your legitimate feelings or compromise your self-esteem! 
7. Have always good intentions; but greater should be your thrust on implementation!
8. Be energetic but don’t make attempts to exhibit it through your body language or oratory skills; instead allow it to be experienced by others on their own!
9. Believe in actions; but completely regulate your reactions!
10. Be confident; but avoid at every cost to be arrogant!
11. Be open as well as ardent observer!
12. Believe your people; but never be blindfolded and biased!
13. Charisma helps, but not without character and convictions!
14. Generosity is as relevant as gratefulness!

So if you make “being good enough” as your goal, then growth and successes are bound to greet you!