Resilience as a Virtue

The present world is indeed the VUCA world that we are living in. We being a management institute with a global mindset, perceive this as an opportunity for training the best brains to be ready managers and future leaders. Being a professor helps me to connect with students not only in the area of interest which is professional skilling but also being a mentor helps me to understand closely the psyche of the future professional sitting in my class. With my over two decades of experience in the classroom, I have understood one trait that the learners understand complex mantras of life with simple anecdotes. One of my experiences is when the students join the program, most of the students would be excited, and happily ready to take on the world. But as the days pass and the stress of work-life starts very few in the mix would be seen grumpy, sad, irritated and stressed. The reason; is not able to find the Success that they thought will come to them. In my mentoring session with these learners, I have often used the story of a village where an old man used to sit under a Banyan tree at the village chaupal with sadness all his life cursing something or the other. The residents of the village have almost started taking him for granted for his irrational irritation, they use to ignore him and walk away. His face was grumpy, sad and with wrinkles. He always looked tired and helpless. One fine day a villager went on shouting from one corner to the other saying this old man is smiling and looked happy and his face is glowing with freshness and looked content. The whole village gathered around him to know what has changed in him. He said, for the past 80 years I was chasing happiness and it was useless, so I got fed-up of chasing it and decided to live without it and just enjoy life……so the moral of the story is clear “ Don’t chase HAPPINESS’ Enjoy Life”. Similarly ‘don’t chase SUCCESS enjoy what you are doing for your professional growth. Chasing Success is like chasing happiness in the above anecdote, instead enjoy the learner’s life, that is enjoy the journey, the destination is sure to come! This is one way of building resilience as a virtue. The story is simple but the impact is huge. One more thing to understand is complexity is solved only with simple solutions. That’s the Mantra of Happiness and Success.

The psychology of the student is built around the experience that the environment provides. Sometimes it’s our way of life that has not been questioned in our thought process. That we have to control our thoughts and we cannot allow someone else to direct us to what we must think. So the thought process is such that you choose what to think. Once the right choice is made the psyche will do the rest. To explain this tough and complex subject I often use this anecdote with my Mentees. There was once a wise man, the people of the vicinity used to take his advice for the problems they use to have, they found him very wise and his wisdom was respected a lot. Once this happened that a certain group of people came with the same problems every day. To this group he told a joke and they roared in laughter, after a couple of minutes he told the same joke and very few smiled when he told the same joke a third time NO ONE LAUGHED ANYMORE. The wise man said “you cannot laugh at the same joke over and over again, so why are you crying about the same problem?” moral of the story: worrying will not solve your problem, it will just waste your time and energy! Action and implementation of a chosen thought process can only solve your problem. Simply talking and discussing a problem will not lead to solutions instead would lead to wastage of resources!

Enjoying the whole process of grooming the future leaders have taught me one thing as a professor and leader of an institute you must “Learn & Inspire”. Journey towards building Resilience as a virtue…