In my endeavour to effect a career transition in the foreseeable future I felt it of paramount importance to set certain personal rules to formulate for my day-to-day practice for this journey.
Recently, I was reading Brian Tracy’s book “Leadership” which so succinctly brought out this facet. To be frank such impositions placed on one’s self to curb the relentless trampling of the mind on issues and non-issues requires one to quell procrastination and kick-start the ‘get up and get going’ template.
It does not matter where you came from. It only matters where you are going ! Frankly – this one really did set me thinking ! To be honest, at least to myself, this has been one major facet which I could dub as the ‘fear of the unknown’ . Having led a cocooned existence in an organisation which allows minimal interaction in one’s daily existence with trade or industry the sense of foreboding could have been more than words can convey as to forthcoming entry into another beautiful world. Yet, as I gave priority to smoothen my transition journey and got opportunity to interact – with many virtually and luckily with some in person, the rough edges of my intellect smoothened out to reinforce what Brian dwells on with regard to it.
If you want your life to get better, you have to get better. I take this advice in a manner which could be more than just ratcheting it up as plain-speak. For me as a person this conveys a journey to be undertaken, a metamorphosis to give effect to, to evolve from ‘this’ to ‘that’ without disturbing one’s core values nor the ethics one has stood up for or the lessons one has learnt along the way. One need not discard anything and yet add value to the way ahead with ‘that’ smile that comes naturally when one faces a similar challenge which was so successfully surmounted in the past that the taste of victory still lingers on the tongue !
You can learn anything that you want to learn. A certain section of my colleagues were uncertain about my unrelenting quest for learning. The underlying emotion to their mind was my age . An age where, as per them , one gets their portfolio rejigged to more in ‘Debt’ than in ‘Equity’. However, experiencing my zest to learn extensively about emerging domains or the eagerness to re-inforce learnings in the time tested methodologies of yore, to my mind when I reflect so, they mostly kept their counsel. I would not call this in any manner a victory but rather providing space for me to do what I truly wanted to do.
The core values that emerge out of all this serious reflection as I sit and soak in the last of the winter sun this Sunday afternoon with a clear view of the snow-capped Himalayas could be similar to as summarised by this reading :
(a) Do a lot more of certain things. Additionally, do a lot less of certain others !
(b) Commence doing certain actions which have been consigned to the recesses of your mind and Yes, immediately put a stop to certain other irrelevant stuff which worm their way through one’s day.
Learn to unlearn and re-learn ….