The Five Year Rule

This is one of the posts in the “Thumb Rules” category that I try to follow purely based on my own experience.

“Sometime we are so overwhelmed by our surroundings and the notion that everyone is really focusing on us & we have to respond to everyone, that we become over-conscious and externally driven. There are events we attend, people we engage with and things we spend our time on, that add absolutely no value to our lives, apart from the temporary courtesy that is to be forgotten in a while. It not only affects the short term decisions we make, but sometimes life changing ones.”

Later when you think about it, most of those people whom you took so seriously are nowhere to be seen in your lives, they are either in a different company, city, state or country altogether only occasionally appearing on the social media feed. Would they even remember, care as to what you said or did at that particular moment? Why then would you consider the current such group of people & come to the same conclusions five years later?

How do you know? Well, with intuition, gut feeling, mental feedback that you get from the discussions & time spent it becomes quite clear. If colleagues, friends and family members do fall in the five-year category, you will find that you care for them & vice versa. They support you in every decision be it success or failure. You do not really have to be conscious about their criticism or feedback in a negative way & always find communication is in sync.

As they say, you are average of the five people you associate with most. So it certainly helps to know your five-year group and build an amazing ecosystem that is free from anxiety, consciousness, criticism & formality.

Please also remember to be nice to everyone else as a courtesy, help them if you can but not as a formality expecting something in return & definitely not at the cost of your peace of mind.