[dropcaps type=’square’ font_size=’80’ color=’#4a4a4a’ background_color” border_color”]E[/dropcaps]xactly 24 months ago, it was time for me to write my essays for undergrad university applications. I remember sitting in front of the laptop frustrated, unhappy and unable to write down anything. The expectation I had from myself kept ringing in my head,
[blockquote text=”I need to be the best, I know if I write it in this specific way it will impress the admission officers.” text_color=”” width=”” line_height=”undefined” background_color=”” border_color=”” show_quote_icon=”yes” quote_icon_color=”#4285F4″]
I started looking up letters of students admitted to Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, LSE. Intimidated by their stories and the massive criteria list I had set for myself to fulfil, I ended up more frustrated.
I remember overthinking and procrastinating a lot during that time, ending up with a blank screen on my laptop.
Me in 2018
This situation wasn’t something I paid keen attention to after I somehow managed to submit the essays in the wake of the panic monster of deadlines. I was freely flowing with what came my way until I came across the theory of the golden circle by Simon Sinek in one of the Enterprise sessions. He explained the power of asking the question of ‘why are we doing x or y’ to ourselves whether it’s for starting a business or even completing a project. He emphasised on how the answer from this question shows your purpose of doing the action in the first place. It’s a way through which people can feel connected to your cause, and the very reason that thousands of people showed up to support many of Martin Luther King’s moving speeches.
The Golden Circle theory by Simon Sinek
The golden circle theory without doubt sparked an unforeseen interest in me. I started focusing more on understanding the ‘why’ behind the projects that I joined or even why the companies I was interviewing for do what they do.
[highlight color=” background_color=’#949494] In fact, Psychology says that our deepest beliefs stored in our subconscious mind are the core drivers of our behaviours. It all made sense.[/highlight]
However, it wasn’t until quite later that I truly understood the essence of what was going on. Fast forward to 8-9 months, where I got the opportunity to work with Akash who was going to mentor us on how to design a workshop around the topic we had chosen for our group. On the very first meeting, instead of assigning roles and finalising our topics, he asked us a very simple question.
“Why is this topic of communication so important to you?”
He wanted us to set our intentions clearly for what we wished to achieve from hosting the workshop, and set them in a way that they aligned for the whole team. He invited us to look deep into ourselves, and allowed us to be vulnerable. We searched within us and shared with each other the core issues in our lives which made us feel that we need to be better at a certain aspect of communication.
In the entire 3 week process, we spent 2 weeks exploring our intent, doing some homework on the topics and returning with deeper research. We diverged, converged and emerged from communication and finalised the topic of being active listeners to people we care about. In the last week of prep, we naturally started designing the workshop flow because we had come to understand it so deeply. This time there were no frustrations. I felt truly amazed at this entire process.
A small snippet from one of our meetings. Our aligned intentions brought us closer and made it even more fun to work!
However, it wasn’t until the very day of the workshop when I could understand the real magic of intentions. During the dry run with Apeksha, I was only able to read from the script I had written, I was afraid of my delivery and started focusing way too much on my expressions and how well I delivered. I recall her halting me, and saying,
[blockquote text=”Shreeya, Try speaking from your heart na? It’s looking very made up.” text_color=”” width=”” line_height=”undefined” background_color=”” border_color”” show_quote_icon=”yes” quote_icon_color=”#4285F4″]
At that point honestly, I didn’t know what to do. I thought to myself okay, let me take some time off, let me prepare and learn the script.
With only 30 minutes left for the final event, I had to take a shower, I had to learn, I had to set up a few things and it started scaring me even more. I was in the shower, trying hard to remember the exact things that I had written down until something hit me out of nowhere. The real reason we were organizing this was to help the others truly understand the value and tools for being better listeners. It was important for the audience to absorb the information, it wasn’t really important for me to look good. And somehow, while practicing in the shower with those intentions, the words started flowing.
I slowly felt myself aligning with the intention and feeling more and more authentic, genuine and human.
Some smiling faces at the workshop. 🙂
Just by placing the intent clearly, I felt aligned with the purpose of what I was doing. My behaviours and words started working towards that purpose. But most of all, I finally felt authentic. I didn’t feel like I was only trying to impress people, but instead I was trying to come from a genuine place. It washed over a different type of peace over me, which I still haven’t been able to understand. But as I write this blog, after setting the intention of honestly expressing my story, I knew it had washed over me again.
I feel like this concept helped me become more structured and come from a place which wasn’t driven by selfishness. It made me get the work done. It stopped me from being all over the place, frustrated and avoiding tasks. It helped me averse the guilt that would follow later, and replaced it with satisfaction.
Simple and sweet.