Being a Mentee

During my whole school life, I was more of an introverted character, someone who you would see always standing in the corners where people hardly were able to even notice my presence. Once my chemistry teacher even commented that ‘Tu yaha kya kar raha hai, tu to commerce student haina’, yes I am talking about that level of invisibility without even wearing the harry potter cloak. I would only and only speak if asked for something and I hardly ever initiated a conversation. This worked out well until school ended, and bam, I suddenly was in a different world when I took a drop year and had to visit career counsellors to decide my path ahead. I had decided that I don’t want to take this ‘invisibility’ with me to my college.

During this drop year, while I developed an urge to work on my personality and make it charismatic, I was down and confused in life. I made a decision to work with a start-up ( Quest solutions) and do distance learning, but this decision wasn’t easy, I was stressed if this was the right thing to do. I was feeling very much bogged down with the weight of this decision and just then I met Vivek sir(one of my bosses at the Quest solutions), who then told me, “tune ye choose Kiya that’s why I know you are going to excel, make the decision work for you” and that got imprinted in my head just like a permanent tattoo ( you know, let’s call it a brain tattoo). He switched on a button and I could feel some current flowing.

This current has made me do many things like coding, sales, marketing, applications, project management etc. During this time I learned that having the right mentors make me bring out the best of myself.

But as we know change is the only thing that remains constant, there came a big change in my life. Quest solutions had to shut down under some circumstances and I suddenly felt that there was no guidance or direction I knew anymore. All my motivation and excitement came to a pause and I felt like my lazy old self again, a guy who secluded himself and didn’t want to interact with anyone. But you know as they say, ‘ Abb toh sher ke muh ko khoon lag chuka hai’. I knew I want to not only work but also surround myself with the right mentor and like-minded people. Just around this time when I was looking for such platforms, I saw one video which said “lazy people are not lazy, they are hungry, they want real problems, real projects and they want to work with experienced people and mentors“. This switched the button on again and the current made me immediately sign up for Enterprise India Fellowship where I got it all.

There are two types of pains in life, one is sitting and thinking about the problems and the other is getting out of your comfort zone and taking charge of them. Enterprise India Fellowship came with its own sweet pain which started making me come to terms with my problems and take charge of them slowly.

Only last month I was sitting and thinking about all the things I want to learn together and trust me those thoughts haunted me for many nights until  our mentor Aditya at Enterprise India Fellowship took a session on priorities. In the session, he asked us all to think about that one thing that we can learn, and will the one thing that you will learn will make the other things not matter after you acquire it. Instantly, without any hesitation, I said ‘SALES’. I want to learn Sales and that is my priority for the next 6 to 7 months. Adi said that 80% of our energy has to go to this master skill that we want to learn and that immediately hit the thoughts of learning many things at once, which were haunting me earlier. Now, this is my new Brain Tattoo in life, I want to focus on one Masterskill at a time. 

Another such incident last month was during a weekender event I was attending with Enterprise. We were supposed to make a cube out of paper and on one side write – 1 thing that we cared about, on the other two sides- why does that thing matter to us, and on the last side- 3 skills that we had. Knowing that I could write these answers was itself mindblowing for me. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t feeling blank when someone asked me about my passions and skills. This ability to reflect gave me immense power, clarity and validation for what I am currently focusing on in my life.

You know, how google maps first need your current location and then tracks the direction ahead, just like that in life I realized that instead of worrying about all things together and not knowing my present location will only hamper my growth. These reflective exercises helped me know my current location and my mentors help me in creating a direction ahead.

I am going to always ‘ be a good mentee’ and keep finding mentors and learning for life.