Somehow I am fascinated to watch homes that are being built. On my way
to work there are several homes that are being built. Sometimes I just
park my car and watch people at work. They build quite fast. Where
there was nothing but plain ground a few weeks ago, I can see a
beautiful home today.
Think about the process for a second at a high level.
2. An architect is brought in to design the home based on the requirements of the home owner
3. Once the design is made, a contractor is identified – who will take care of the project from then on.
4.
The contractor actually gets a ton of people involved – from people who
will do the carpentry to people who will take care of the plumbing to
the people who will take care of electricity
5. Once the exterior part is completed, an interior decorator will decide on beautifying the home inside
and so on.
If
you think about it, a project like home building is a project not to be
undertaken alone. That sounds very obvious, right! The right people
have to come in at the right time. For example, an electrician can’t
come in before the architect. He can, but he won’t be of much use.
Similarly, the right time to get an interior decorator is after the
home is built. You can get him involved in the project along with the
architect but his real work will begin after the home is built. If you
are the home owner, you are still doing a lot of work and making a lot
of decisions (after all, it’s your home) but not all the work is done
by you. It would be ridiculous to think of building the home completely
by yourself.
Now, let’s move on to your own life. It’s like a
lifetime building project where you are making a lot of decisions and
actually doing a lot of work. But it would be equally ridiculous to
assume that you MUST do all the work all by yourself. You need to get a
lot of people involved in this project. For your home, you need the
best architect you can afford. If your home is VERY important, imagine
how much MORE your life should be important. If you don’t have REALLY
good people on your side, how can you expect phenomenal results from
your life? Yes, the temptation would be to do things by yourself
because you CAN do them. But working with a great team on your side to
design and execute on your life project will provide a leverage at a
whole new level. One thing to remember, though, is that in order for
this to work well, you should also be ready to play a SIGNFICANT part
in the design and execution of other people’s life projects!
The big difference in the above analogy is that the results are very tangible when you build a home (Thanks Ravi for the tip.)
When
you are building your life, the big result is “what you become” and not
“what you get.” Unfortunately, what you become as a person borders on
edge of the tangible-intangible scale.
Summary: You don’t have to go ALONE on the most important journey of your life!