Looking back with pride, not regret

I have always been extremely ambitious in whatever I decide to do. Irrespective of whether I achieve something or not, I believe that not failure, but low aim is a crime. I started my 11th with one such audacious goal of getting selected into the world’s coveted finance university. I was ready to do whatever it takes to get there and I was looking for platforms that can help me do some work that is unique in its own sense.

By complete coincidence, my dad suggested an online workshop which I had no idea about and I openly said yes to do it. I did know that the workshop was to be conducted by Adi but I was not sure about what was going to happen there. I did the workshop and got to know about Enterprise. I was a bit hesitant and sceptical about taking up the fellowship but considering the avenues which were going to open up for me, I enrolled for the fellowship.

In hindsight, this decision has been an important and transforming one for me. This opportunity just came to me by chance but I was intelligent enough to grab it with both hands. As I am getting close to my graduation from the fellowship, this journey of 9 months has been full of experiences and transformations. Obviously, I can’t share all of them, but this blog is about 2 stories from my Enterprise journey that have caused a transformation in the way I approach things and live my life.

1)Conscious living

Last year, that is in 2022, we had a special session at Enterprise on 30th December where we looked back at our previous year and reflected on what all had happened in that year. Initially, I thought that 2021 had been such an eventful year for me. I had completed my 10th amidst the Covid crisis, started my 11th standard in a completely new college, and started a lot of new things. But when I actually sat down to remember and recollect what all had happened month by month, to my surprise, I was completely blank. Oh my God! I couldn’t even enumerate the incidents that had happened month by month. I was suffering from a complete mental block. I could hardly think of a couple of experiences but other than that there was nothing that I could remember from 2021. 365 days passed by and I could hardly think of moments that could be counted on my fingers. After this experience, I realized that days were just passing by. I was sure that I had a lot of fun moments but I just couldn’t think of them. I felt like time was just flowing like a river at a constant speed and I was just doing my normal stuff without reflecting on what I was doing. I was in a way living my life but at the same time was not really living it. I thought this needs to change. This is not the way I wanted to continue living my life. Bang from that moment onwards I decided that I am going to start writing a diary for myself. I didn’t want this resolution of mine to fade away as it had happened earlier. I can proudly say that as of today, I haven’t missed a single day of writing my diary. There were a lot of times when I felt like not continuing it but when I wrote that down, it gave me the impetus to move forward and have a better, more conscious life.

2)My experience is what I make it

When I joined Enterprise, I didn’t have a complete idea about what I was up for. I just knew that in Enterprise I will be given projects to work on, I work on them and move on to the next project. Right from my childhood, I had the experience where I would be given a task and then work on it. I was used to completing tasks that were told to me rather than thinking about what I really wanted. At Enterprise, it was completely on me. I had complete authority to take the amount of work I wanted and complete freedom to work on as many projects as I wanted to. I was not aware of this fact at the start so I was getting complacent and working on only 1 project where I could probably work on 2 or 3. I was only doing stuff that I was comfortable doing and was not really making the most out of the opportunity I had at my hands. During this phase, I had a call with one of my friends Akash and what he shared completely changed the way I was looking at my fellowship. He said that your experience is what you make it. No one is going to come and spoon-feed you about your projects. All of us (Enterprise Team Members) will guide you but at the end of the day, you are the one who is going to shape your experience at the fellowship. This discussion caused a real shift in the way I was looking at my projects. I understood that Enterprise or life for that matter is like a buffet. There are a lot of dishes available on the menu. Now it’s my decision how many of them I want to eat. I can do as many projects as I want, they can be of as versatile backgrounds as I want but it’s my choice to look out, ask and work towards them. If one of the dishes doesn’t taste good, it’s my choice to either ruin my experience or then look for a better dish. One of the key attributes of a buffet is self-service. No one is going to come to my table and offer me all the different dishes. It’s completely in my hands to get up and look out for the right dishes which suit me. Another reason why I resonate with this example is that I will only understand the dishes I like after I taste them. Rejecting them based on my primary perception can result in me missing a fantastic opportunity. All in all, my experience is solely in my hands and it’s me who is responsible for making it either fabulous or ordinary. With this thought in my mind, I have consciously changed the way I approached my fellowship thereafter. I made a deliberate effort to explore, learn and do things I am not good at. I was not confident presenting to people, talking in front of people so I made sure that I host meetings/workshops to create a different experience for myself. I did that when I hosted #karo,  a greenroom(A monthly program at Enterprise which is open to everybody), and team sessions at an NGO as a part of one of my projects. I knew my writing skills weren’t the best. So, I made an effort and have written 6 conflexions(blogs) up till now. I approached my team coordinator in one of my projects and now I am going to contribute to writing an actual research paper. I never imagined I could do this, but this is the experience that I have consciously chosen for myself and I am seeing the improvement in me.

An opportunity that came knocking on my door completely by chance has resulted in a transformational experience, to say the least. I can confidently say that I have more stories to share from the past year than the first 10 years of my life put together. I had initially joined this program to learn entrepreneurial skills, develop my business acumen, build my CV, etc. But now that I am reflecting back on my journey, I have experienced some significant mindset shifts which I never expected. In my opinion, these behavior shifts are much more valuable than the tangible things I was aiming for while starting the fellowship. Also, I understand that this is not the end, there is much more to learn, explore and experience. But as I graduate from this fellowship, as I  step into a new phase of life, I look back and feel proud about the journey I have had and wish for more such in the future.