It’s Different!

Maggi tomato chilli sauce, it’s different. Those of us who grew up watching Javed Jaffrey in the Maggi sauce ad will probably even remember the sequences in the advertisement and how well it was established that this new product was different from the previous versions.

Different – recently I have been thinking a lot about this word. I don’t even remember where and when I first heard this word or how I learnt it. May be it was already a part of the Oxford/Cambridge dictionary that was default programmed in my body software during manufacture!

How much we all like to call ourselves as “I’m different”. We yearn to be different from others. Since childhood. We always wanted to be called a different child, gifted one for the family. In the class, we wait to be proclaimed a different thinking mind. In any relationship, we seek to be considered different from the others. And as we get into career, the real difficult part of life, whether we want to or not, we ought to remain different, to survive.

As we grow through these various stages of life, fighting and struggling for success and fame, little do we seem to spend time and realize how different we have become from ourselves.  As in, what we are actually and how we actually behave is mostly so very different. Our behavior appears to be subject to the people in discussion or concern, the situation, the time, the stage, the phase and mostly mood.

About a year back, in one of the training sessions sponsored by my employing organization, I learnt to sketch out behavior based attributes of an individual, through some statistical tools preceded with a questionnaire. The group process enlightened me that it’s not just me who is different at home and at work, but almost all. Some of the revelations of my chart were tough to digest and hard to believe.

So finally, I am different. Alas! Different not from my friends, different not from my colleagues, different not from my family. I am plain different from just myself. And so is everyone.

The difference now is just that of a single step, I am aware and conscious, and some others aren’t. How does this change my life? Not much until recently when I was having a chat with an old friend and many others to realize how “different” as a word and concept has changed their lives topsy-turvy. How someone’s being different has shattered them or sometimes the not-being-different has spoiled the show. Or just being different has made all the difference.

I know of so many colleagues, whom after knowing personally, I am no longer that excited to meet. I have so many friends with whom I started as colleagues and today we are friends because I caught a chance to see their other side. I have known so many champion project managers who goof up life, and so many goof-ed up project leaders who have shaped up their life beautifully. I know a handful who are the same, any which case!

Let’s avoid any blame game. I agree we are all lost in the bureaucracy of the corporate world, peer competition, management expectations and personal benchmarks. In this maze, we seem to forget what we are. What we really are. What we actually are.

Would it make sense to bridge this gap between The I and The ME, and try always to be The MYSELF?