In the earlier columns, we learnt about the role of ‘Mojo’ in the fate of our happiness, its meaning and that it has four key components. Understanding each of these four components is necessary to enhance our ‘Mojo’ as well as sustaining it. In the last column, we learnt about our identity and how it evolves and drives our actions. The good news is that we learnt that we can create our identity to reflect what we want to achieve in our work life and personal life.
Look within
The second component is “achievement.”
Achievement is connected to both our “professional mojo” and our “personal mojo.” Professional mojo is what we bring to the job. When present, this helps us become “winners.” Personal mojo is what the job brings to us. Quoting Dr Goldsmith, “if we find happiness, meaning, rewards, learning, and gratitude in what we are doing – we will define ourselves as “winners”. In the best of worlds, both types of achievement could the same.
A mojo crisis may sometimes happen when there is a disconnect between the two parameters we use to assess our own achievement – when what others feel about our achievement is not in sync with what we feel about them ourselves. The key is to reflect on our own definition of ‘achievement.’
What matters to us? And what does to the world outside?
One of the key reflections is to check if we have a habit of overestimating our contributions to a successful endeavor. When we do so, we are crediting ourselves with an achievement that does not rightly belong to us.
We may think our accomplishment has the impact of a nuclear bomb while in reality it may be more like a popgun barely making a sound. Likewise, often people also go back in time, bragging of something we consider an achievement which is no longer relevant and so may have to be consigned to ancient history.
Success stress test
The opposite may also be true. Many of us tend to cite our most recent achievement as if it has more weight simply because it is more recent. Dr Goldsmith recommends a stress test for our achievements. We need to ask ourselves (source: Mojo by Dr Marshall Goldsmith):
> Is this what happened or am I filtering it through some inflexible personal preconception or belief?
> Am I exaggerating my role in the achievement?
> Am I discounting other people’s/colleagues’ contribution?
> Am I going too far back in time, so the achievement is no longer credible?
> Am I attaching too much weight to a recent event simply because I remember it more vividly than an older event?
It is therefore important to get realistic with our achievements because without doing so, our mojo will not be real. This revolves around looking at ourselves more objectively. The advantage then is we can strive for achievement that really matters to us. And simultaneously, we can let go of the ones that do not create meaning and happiness for us.
Mojo, as we learnt earlier, is the positive spirit toward what we are doing now that starts from the inside and radiates to the outside. After all successful people do not deny their impulse to differentiate themselves. They actually embrace it. The impulse does not have to be externalised. It can be small. It just has to be ours – and ours alone.
Our identities and reputations are made in such small and incisive moments. We do not have to be great innovators or reformers. Mojo is about being who we are and making small wins that we can rightfully feel we earned and deserved.
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