Becoming Outspoken!

April 19, 2021

The Approach, The Mentality, The Seriousness of doing something, be it a task or even while I am approaching someone or talking to someone, all of this has come to me. I wasn’t taught this separately. I just saw me parents doing it and it came to me.

My dad is someone who constantly seeks improvement. He left cricket at the age of 13 and now at 40, he started playing it again. He’s been playing regularly since. My mom does everything with a lot of generosity and is very particular about food habits and is always concerned about our fitness.

We had a cricket tournament in our society in February 2021. We had small kids, ladies of all age groups, grandfathers, and grandmothers participating as well. The aim was to make people interact with each other and get to know them on a deeper level. It was also a test of how well everyone could work with each other. The youth members were assigned to take care of the miscellaneous tasks such as getting the ground ready, getting a banner printed with the sponsor’s logos on it, officiating the matches, etc.

For the presentation ceremony, there was no plan in place on who would anchor it. 2 mins before the start one of our society members came up to me and said, “ Jay, you will do the anchoring na?” And I said yes without any second thoughts. Me having no prior experience in this domain did not act as any hesitation in taking it up. Probably the experience of playing in many tournaments and hearing different commentary and post-match presentation styles had already prepared me subconsciously.

It happened because –

1. Learning attitude – I learned about how to do it over a while. It was not conscious but rather sub-conscious. The thought process on how, the do’s and don’ts, was constantly running in the background. From April 2020, I started writing blogs. As a child, I always dreamt of writing poems, shaayaris, articles and express my thoughts in a structured fashion. This journey of self-reflection and written form of communication, what we call Conflexion at Enterprise, made me realize the attitude of learning. I wrote, wrote what I could relate to, created my style. Writing helped me realize that whatever I’ve experienced or have learned over the years is because of the attitude I have. I have always been eager to learn and that reflected in my blogs. The written form of communication in turn improved my oral communication. It helped me make significant progress in my journey of becoming outspoken. 
2. Generosity – In tasks like these, the generous attitude plays a very important role. Our feelings have to be kept aside, the biases have to be neglected and focus has to be only on the GOOD part or rather what everyone perceives as good. I worked on market research for a company a year back. In projects where clients are involved, I feel generosity plays a very important role in achieving the desired results. We had meetings on a frequent basis, facts were shared, opinions were exchanged. We’ve had meetings running for hours continuously where the longest one went on for four and a half hours straight. All this could only happen because our approach to anything we did was very generous.
3. Personal Touch – Some personal references, use of info. that I perceive of them makes it relatable for them. It makes them feel that they are part of it as well! Green room, a story-sharing evening that happens once every month at The Enterprise India Fellowship took the majority of my time in the lockdown. I co-hosted this space for 4 months and while answering one of the questions, I mentioned how co-hosting is not just a task for me rather it’s about understanding my skills, getting to know about my flaws, getting feedback on what I could improve on. This answer instantly made people relate to it and it helped in adding value to our event.

Whatever I have done till now, be it in academics, sports, or extracurricular activities, is because of the qualities that were passed on to me. I did not realize this before and there were times of questioning whether what I was doing was right. Now, the results I’ve been getting in every field put everything into perspective.
This blog is about my experiences and the reflections I’ve had over the past few months. The word self-reflection has been the “go-to” for a year now but its seeds were sowed long before. Whenever I used to come home from school, my mom’s and dad’s first question used to be,

[blockquote text=”Beta, how was your day?
What did you do at the school today?” text_color=”” width=”” line_height=”undefined” background_color=”” border_color=”” show_quote_icon=”yes” quote_icon_color=”#4285F4″]

These questions kickstarted a thought process that has helped me improve exponentially, helped in getting a clearer image of who I am, and most importantly helped in the process of being outspoken!

Jay Shah

0 0 votes

Article Rating

Subscribe

Login

Notify of

new follow-up comments new replies to my comments

Label

{} [+]

Name*

Email*

Website

Label

{} [+]

Name*

Email*

Website

0 Comments

Oldest

Newest Most Voted

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

More from the blog

View more

Inside a Conflexion: Lessons from Mohammad Choonawala’s Let’s Enterprise Journey

An inside look at how the Let’s Enterprise learning model uses Conflexions to strengthen emotional intelligence. This piece…

The Fig Tree Dream

The Fig Tree Dream I’m stressed. Like genuinely stressed. I don’t know who I am anymore or what…

The Curve

I’ve always imagined life as a train journey, the kind that doesn’t stop too often, just keeps moving…