Detached attachment.

In one of the Manufacturing companies that I worked for, I had an opportunity to work with a Business Head who was an IITian.  One thing that I liked about working with him was, whenever I go with a suggestion or initiative, he would do a critical review, highlight what is good and what is bad and give his suggestions for refining it further. Not just that. He would follow up with me on my initiative till it’s fully implemented and he would fully give the credit to me. Wow.  He was sure a great boss to work with and I still cherish that experience.

But not all the bosses that worked with were so generous, but, they taught me a valuable lesson, detached attachment. That’s what I am going to talk about in this posting.

What if you work with a boss who is not as receptive as my IITian boss? Let us look at a hypothetical situation given below.

Let say that you are a MBA-HR fresher and you get your dream job. A few weeks into you dream job, you feel that there is lot of scope for taking initiatives and learning many things. The first initiative that you take is effective onboarding of new joiners. So you do an extensive search in google, talk to your friends and come out with list of various things that can be done as part of on-boarding process and share it with your Boss.

The next day, your boss is calling you and you are really excited to listen to his feedback.  But your boss says, all these are theoretical and let us stick to what we do right now.  How would you feel?

# Very disappointed and leave it at that.

# Try to refine it and take it up again.

I am sure many would not get disappointed and you would try to understand what he expects and try to refine it. What if he rejects few more times stating that all these are not practicable and you have “new-joiner fever”, ie., you are over-enthusiastic which you will get over shortly. Don’t worry and try to settle down in your job.  

I am sure this will surely be a negative reinforcement to kill one’s initiative and enthusiasm. It’s not for just initiatives but for anything and everything that you would want do.

So what do we do what we are in such a situation?

Detached attachment.

What does it meant?

Give your best shot without any expectation that it will be approved or accepted. Don’t get disappointed even if it’s rejected. And do continue to give your best shot as you did for the very first time and with the same commitment level, ie.,   Commitment = 100% and emotions or disappointments = 0%.  That’s what I call it as a detached attachment.   

When you practice detached attachment, there is very less stress and you still have good satisfaction that you are not stopping and continue to do what you wish to do.  And continuous attempts will get you results too.  

Remember, it took 1000 attempts for Thomas A Edison to invent the electric bulb. 

diD yOU enJOY ReADinG ThIS ArTIcLE? 

                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO