“Equanimity” – Why it is one of my favorite words?

(Published - LinkedIn Oct24, 2020)

It’s not because I love Statistics (“Really!” – I can almost see my high-school teacher rolling his eyes). It’s because the laws of probability are true for everything in life! Just like one has a 50% chance of getting a head or a tail on a coin toss; on any given day one has 50% chance of being sad or happy; on any given assignment (or a project) one has a 50% chance of winning or losing.

As a very successful project manager in an amazing company, you might just not believe me. Just do a simple search of project success rates; and you will see how real failures are! Consultants, managers, leaders and employees - all make a life out of “beating the odds!”

 “Equanimity” doesn't mean we shouldn’t strive to always win and always be happy – “Equanimity” simply means that be ready for the opposite outcome to hit soon, if you are bombarded with one. More importantly perhaps, it means, learning to accept failures with an even kill as much as learning to deal with success - because both are inevitable and equally probable!

If you ask my son, he will give you anther of my favorite quotes that he hears from me as life philosophies -- “Be a cockroach, and not a unicorn” – something real, something sustainable rather than imaginary growth prospects. Equanimity teaches us to deal with our own shades of gray, and hence prepares us to deal with life’s share of gray!

Telling about values to be inculcated is easy – dealing with them is a lifetime of learning and experience. Just because someone knows what “equanimity” means does not any way or form indicate he or she is a master. The whole concept here is we all practice, and we all succeed, and we all fail – so be nice to yourself and be nice to others! We will all get there someday….