Storieo

Tag: Career

  • A Peek through

    A Peek through

    A conservative Indian household, an average girl child who is not allowed to have her life decisions, a tough picture to draw but not so uncommon in the recent events of education system and growing unemployment everywhere. Thought to be a child prodigy but didn’t turn out so is my story. I used to be a good student till I reached puberty when things started a little “not so planned for my parents”.

    When I was in class 9, I was sent to hostel far away from home so that I could focus on my studies and for a time being it really worked till class 10. Got above 90%, something which every average girl of my age dream of. But my parents never thought of that way. They didn’t think it was well enough. Like who would make them understand that 10th standard certificate is nothing but a “Date of birth” verification certificate and nothing else. For 11, I was sent to pursue Medical when all along I loved subject math’s. All my life I was told what to do and what not to do. Never was I asked what I would love to do. As expected, it didn’t turn out well and I didn’t get selected. I turned to B.sc for my higher studies and had my head wrapped around the idea that “Ok, this may be something which I can find my peace with”. But of course, it will never be as you wish to be. After all this is India, where parents are bound to meddle with your life until you are married and out of their hair strand. So, the same happened. One day out of the blue my father wanted me to pursue MBA. I must tell you preparing for MBA is no joke. You have to be well versed in English, quants, and data interpretation. Also, it needs preparation of at least 9-10months. And I had only 4months of preparation plus my college preparations, assignments. I didn’t get selected to the IIMs in my running year so I opted for next year. But the meddling never stopped there. Now they want me to continue with my B.sc and study for M.sc, as they learnt from somewhere that MBA is not for students from biology background. Thus imagine my dilemma.

    Now from my story I wanted to portray that you have got to take the steering wheel of your life. You have got to have your dream. Or else someone else will try snatch your life and take control. Maybe they are your well wishers but they are not “know it all” or God. You have to know what you want to do and go for it. Don’t turn up like me. I was never taught to dream. I was never taught to build my personality myself. Don’t get lost, cause this world is way worse when you don’t have control of your career and life. You are always allowed to make mistakes, taking one or two bad decisions. But those mistakes are yours to make not your parents or someone else claiming to have knowledge about everything.

  • How Sandeep Maheshwari changed my percetion about career?

    How Sandeep Maheshwari changed my percetion about career?

    Sandeep Maheshwari is the Founder and CEO of ImagesBazaar.com, the world’s largest collection of Indian images. He is one the most successful entrepreneurs of our generation. He also gives motivational seminars (for which he does not charge at all), where he speaks about his success story. He holds the Limca book of records in photo shoots by taking more than 10,000 shots of 122 models in just 10 hours and 45 minutes. Simply, he is the model for success in the Indian youth.

    Luckily, I started listening to his motivational videos quite early on my life. However, I couldn’t grasp the full scope of his seminars. Every word related to career and success from him came from his own experience. And, mind you, he had many experiences in wide range of fields. Most of his lectures are about passion, what you love to do, as opposed to what others think or expect of you. So far it was all good and easy. We knew the importance of passion, which was already firmly established in our minds after me and my friends had once obsessed over the movie 3 Idiots. An important thing that I missed did cost me huge losses in terms of time and money. I, like everyone else, believed that success is possible in limited number of career options. For example, you had to be entrepreneur, doctor, engineer, etc. only then you could have a luxurious career. We never know how such untested assumptions affect our perceptions, and make us take wrong decisions. I knew passion is important, but the money, luxury, whatever was making me believe that I was passionate about something that I was not.

    Here Sandeep Maheshwari came to my rescue and made me realize that it does not matter what the current market says about any stream or career path, if you are passionate about anything and work at it and keep at it, you’ll do far more success and live a far better life than you would have otherwise. This simple insight just flipped my switch. It is how Steve Jobs puts it: “I would rather gamble on our vision than make a me-too product.” This gave me so much confidence and courage in what I’m doing, and kept motivating me to do my thing.

    The second most important lesson he taught me, which is also related to career, is honesty. It seems quite strange even to talk about honesty because we think we know all about it. I mean honest is just a virtue. Right? Wrong. It is much more than this. Can honesty be used to improve one’s business sales? I thought it was impossible because we have been led to believe implicitly that rich people are somehow bad people; atleast that was there where I grew up. The only way you could become rich fast is by wrong means. The dishonest and the corrupted people are the only successful ones. At last, I got over it and saw there is hardly any truth in it. Sandeep Maheshwari used ‘honesty’ in his work- he spoke out truly and clearly what he was doing in his business, where were his profits, what were the sources of his revenue, and so on to his customers. This is what he calls building trust. He believed in absolute transparency. He kept on doing that right from the start of his entrepreneurship career. I was blown by it — seeing the connection between the honesty and business. Is this real life? Somehow, I knew he was right. So, I applied that rule in all walks of my life, not just related to money, and the result was you build huge trust among your colleagues, customers, and every person you meet.

    Those are the major two for me. There are many other such great lessons that he instills from his life anecdotes, which others have claimed that affected their lives. To each his own. I owe a huge portion of my sense of direction in my career to him, and this article is my memoir of me thanking him.

  • A journey to The City of Destiny

    A journey to The City of Destiny

    The story of a Girl, who faces failure at every move in her life. At one moment she feels Soo depressed that she thinks to Quit but then realizes quitting isn’t an option in her life. Now let’s see how she accepts the failures of her life and moves on to find a new way. And how she starts the new beginning of her life.

     

    Now when am finally here, I will not look back to the days of struggle. And to begin with something new and  to start a new life All what I’ve planned is  A new job, A new place some fun time, lots of friends. It wasn’t an easy task for me to reach here -The city of destiny. Even my decision to shift here has been an ultimate result of long dragged failure experiences. Ever since childhood my one and only dream was to land up somewhere from where I can reach the glories of success.

    The journey to here wasn’t a cakewalk for me. After all moving on after accepting failure at each stage does take a lot of courage. My life wasn’t at all as simple as thought. After completing my degree, I got many opportunities. But none could give me the work satisfaction. Slowly I started feeling low and that sense of unsatisfactory life was growing day after day. In couple of days I couldn’t even concentrate on my present job and the poor work results were solely due to my fault. I couldn’t give my best to what i’m doing, I wasn’t able to satisfy my employers with my work.

    In no time I was out of this company too. This was 5th time when I lost a job and this time I was pretty damn serious about my career.

    After all I can’t spend my whole life accepting failures. All what I had to do was to sit alone, get some peace in life and then rethink about my future.

    Then I planned for a holiday tripping with few of my friends where I had fun at its best. From their I went to one of my colleague’s wedding. It was near to our resort, so I couldn’t even make some lame excuse to escape it. But  to my surprise the bridegroom was my best friend.

    “Hey”, he greeted walking towards me

    “Hi Rohan, how are you?”,

    It’s been a long time since we met.

    And here am totally unexpected and uninvited guest.

    “Am fine Divya, how are you?

    Am sorry I couldn’t invite you to my wedding “

    “It’s OK, actually the bride, I mean your wouldbe is my colleague. So am here for the wedding.”

    Com’on gals we have planned out a wonderful evening for you all, come let’s have fun.

    That evening we spent a gala time after a long time.

    Next morning we all woke late, and found the preparations weren’t yet started. Then we found that the wedding planner had dropped out on the last moment.  We were all in dilemma, and Rohan and his bride have lost all  And being the groom’s bestie and a bride’s colleague I couldn’t stop myself helping them in their  crises.

    The wedding was in three days and I hardly had 48 hours to manage with. Luckily with the help of few of my friends we made it a Grand wedding. People were really impressed by the decorations and the arrangement of everything right from guest receiving to the night dinner. People were so damn excited, that they started asking about the wedding planner and in fact few even approached me with their offers.

    Funny isn’t it,

    What I came for!!

    To think about my future. And have some fun with pals.

    And see  where I’ve ended,

    Getting offers as a wedding planner.

    Now when I look back at my life, these were the only few days, where I’ve enjoyed doing something. And even earned name for it.

    Something struck my mind at that very moment. I finally found the job of my choice, Wedding planner. Though it has no comparison with the degrees I’ve earned, but it gives me pleasure. I’ve actually enjoyed what I’ve worked and now I made it clear what I have to do in my life.

    Yeah!! To be precise, I finally found my destiny. Many like me are still in the same run, neither could accept what they are and  nor move on listening to what their heart says.

     

    Image Source: halliecrawford.com