3 lessons of life I learned from Phunsuk Wangdu

The movie 3 Idiots is all set to make movie history in terms of revenue. It has been extremely popular and entertaining too. But I am not about to do a movie review in this forum. My intention is to share the most important lessons I learned from Phusnsuk Wangdu, the protagonist. So here you go.

• Follow your passion: Very often we decieve ourselves by giving in to the demands of the people around us, rather than following what our minds dictate. We go by the set standards of the society and ignore our real passion. This results in dual loss. We end up becoming mediocre professionals in the field that we enter and on the other hand the field which happens to be our real passion, loses a potential talent. A person who has a passion for cooking walks into an engineering college and ends up becoming a mediocre engineer, while the hospitality industry loses a good chef.
• Strive for Excellence: We tend to define certain parameters of success by looking at the people who are deemed to be successful in life. We then channelize all our engergies in chasing this perceived notion of success, instead of focussing on excellence in our respective fields of operation. I have seen many good technologists shifting gears to chase the goal of becoming a manager by doing people management. The end result is that we lose a good technologist and get a bad people manager. If the same technologist would have focussed on developing his skills in technology, he would probably have become an indispensable entity in the organization and which in turn would have made him successful. As Phunsuk Wangdu says, strive for excellence and success will chase you.
• Enjoy the present: We either lose ourselves in the maze of past success and failures, or worry ourselves sick about the future. We cannopt change what has already happened and we cannot predict what happens in future. Instead, if we choose to focus on doing our day to day work with enthusiasm, we may end up positively influencing the future. It is important to appreciate the myriad opportunities offered by the present and enjoy the small but beautiful things happening around us.

Nothing about these lessons is new. These have been told time and again by people in different forms. I just got inspired by Phunsuk Wangdu and decided to share these thoughts. It is possible, that someone somewhere may find it useful and interesting.