Promotion and Pigs

My friend told me this story a while back at the time of my first annual review when i was getting anxious about my performance review.

Apparently the king of gods (lord indra) once while travelling in air with sage narada happened to look down on earth and saw a bunch of pigs sitting merrily in filth and mud. He was repulsed by this and asked sage narada on how the pigs could live there? Narada told indra that he would not understand how it would be to live as a pig and hence he cannot judge it from outside. Indra who was not convinced by this challenged that he would transform himself to a pig and would show to narada that he was wrong. Narada agreed to this merrily and thus began the experiment. Indra transformed himself to a pig and joined the pigs on earth. He slowly started losing his memory and he convinced himself that he was a pig.

The gods were in chaos after a while since their king was missing. They searched for him everywhere assuming that he might have gone to a better place than heaven. However, all their attempts were futile and then finally they happened to meet narada who told them the exact location of indra. Hearing this, they did not believe him and asked narada to take them there. Narada took them there and told them that indra was the fat pig which was merrily enjoying the excreta and covering itself with mud and dirt. Devatas were shocked to see this and they approached the fat pig asking it to come out. The pig refused and told them flatly that there was no better place than this for it. Besides, it got cozy here and doesn't want to move its ass to somewhere unknown. The devas assured that any place is better than this and that it should come out. They even showed a glimpse of the heaven and the apsara's. However, the pig refused flatly. The gods were confused and prayed narada to help them out, for how can they go back without their king? Narada went to the pig and told it that it needn't come...however, he would appreciate if it just came out of its mud pool once. After that, it was free to go back. The pig agreed and came out of the mud and looked back. It was surprised to see where it was living and slowly it dawned that he was not pig but lord indra himself.

My friend told me this story telling me that when it comes to performance, try to set your aims high and not low. You can train yourself to expect a promotion or you can train yourself to learn something new. You can train yourself to get a pay raise or you can train yourself to make an impact. At the end of day, your mind will be busy spinning cycles based on what you set your goals. If so, why be content with lowliness?