There are times once every few days when we get so involved in a task that we don't know what else is happening around us. Our mind, thoughts, emotions, routine and thinking process completely revolves around those moments.
It may be for a short span of time in a activity (like a treasure hunt on your induction week of job), or induction program of college, or may be a lot of times when you are genuinely interested in solving a problem or taking a task upfront.
At such times, we are actually working directly or indirectly. I want to share my one such experience. It was during my college days when we had our annual international college fest - Sympulse!
Oh My God!!! It was the best time period of my college days. 600 individuals working on creating 70+ events spread over 5 days with 7 Executive, 18 Departments, 50 odd head of departments and 600 core committee and junior core committee. I was myself the Executive committee member entrusted with Finance and Hospitality aspect. The days were awesome back then. We were not promised any stipend, promotion, recommendation letter or any reward. Above that we had to manage our in class presence, internals and tests and assignment.
We wouldn't care about the time of the day, the countless numbers of meeting hours on odd timings with barely eating snacks and still planning and organising events involving Bollywood celebrities like Farhan Akhtar, Ayushmann Khurrana, Suniel Shetty, Manish Paul and many more. It was the best time. I don't know what we got out of that. I definitely learned few tough lessons in my three years journey from Core Committee to Executive Member.-
1) Role of a leader- Leader / Head is someone people look up to. You need to have a vision and a dream that will become a reality, your team will follow you and it's your job to convey the vision to your team.
2) Importance of Top Managements unity- If the leaders are not on the same page, if they have different goals and plans, It can be a chaos. I learned how important it was to get all the executives on the same page. (It was definitely a hard job for all of us to agree on something) but again whatever we did or felt as a executive team would easily be visible in the actions of our complete team.
3) If you truly love what you do, intentionally or unintentionally you will get emotionally attached to the task you are working on.
4)You don't know the end result- You don't know what will happen exactly, will you get sponsors, will you have the right events, will you get registrations, will the passes sell? You don't know anything but you trust your vision, you trust your team and their efforts for everything to work out just fine.
I have been experiencing the same feeling today. Working on this tea business right now, I gave up my well settled job, a well set career path, I didn't go for MBA or Masters directly. But I am risking it all to try and set up my very own premium brand of Tea in the retail market. It's Sympulse all over again.
Endless hours of meetings, thought processes, planning, micro managing details of the business, unsure yet confident that all this is working well and will work out well. If nothing else this journey of entrepreneurship has taught me a lot. I have learned to calm myself up, to always look for solutions and not the problems. Nothing seems big enough to scare me off. I was an entrepreneur all my life, just never realised it before. If you see it that way we all are entrepreneurs in our own field of interests. We have our innovative ways of doing things we love, we customise our surroundings.
We may not notice but how the Social media feed of each individual is unique to the kinds of things he/she follows or shows interest into, similarly our thoughts, friends and work life is unique to how we take it as a whole. I know the tasks that I am working on today is not for short term, I am working on setting up a heritage brand, a long term experience. Laying down foundation stones of the Global premium luxury brand of the future. It's not gonna pay me immediately, it will take the best years of my life out in seconds, but I know one thing for sure- I would do it all over again if I had to. Because, I LOVE IT!!!
Just like college days, I am working on something without having stipend or money at the core of it but service and building a global brand as the core focus. There is much more than money, there is this responsibility of introducing a whole new business into the world, of bringing all my creativity and ideas into execution. Trying everything possible at once to see if all the experiments and experiences will lead to a good business.
I work for free today as well, till date my job is the best. I am a construction labour who unknowingly is working on the base pillars and foundation stones of a business model which is gonna be deep rooted into the history of the World. With each passing day I get closer to my goals, dreams, desire. Thanks to platforms like Linkedin I think I am privileged to share my journey as it's in process and not just at the peak. If you have been reading this all the way, trust me when I say this, It's worth it to take the risk that you are to scared to take. People like RichardBranson JeffBezos ElonMusk are in a race to be the first one to take humans on a space travel journey through a commercial flight. Those are the kind of dreams we should work on. Something so big and challenging that it scares us to be better, to do better and to become a better version of ourselves. Not only we become great but we also surround ourselves with like minded people around us.
I don't know how but all this feels right, my gut shouts loud- Let's do this!!! I don't have a proof of how this is right yet I am confident that this is worth all the efforts. As SteveJobs said it- you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. We have to trust our heart and vision that we believe in and give it a shot. We only live once, so let's make it count. Dream big, target higher, challenge yourself to be better and push your limits each and every day.
As they say, when you think you are done, you are only 40% done. Keep the same mindset, go dare to live your dreams, speak up, experience, try and succeed. Do it with full dedication, give your heart and soul into it.
Experience yourself growing from the ashes to stars. Do what you love and make each second count. For now, I am on a journey to experience my own self, to experience how this journey will change me into a better person for the next big thing that awaits me...