Living Unfettered - Go Out and Be

A loud siren cuts the lull of slumber keeping you under the covers, shaking your faith in humanity only to realize, it’s the alarm blaring in the morning. You snap back to reality, stop the alarm and run a quick glance over your phone when another realization dawns, it’s Monday morning! You slowly feel the cogs and wheels in your brain churning and you start mapping out your day. And just the thought of what the day might unfold for you, makes you want to leave the false sense of security your comfortable cover provides! You cannot wait to face the world, to solve your problems, and take your work forward because you love it, are passionate about it and want to see it grow.

Sounds unreal and unfathomable that Monday mornings can be the ones where the thought, ‘why am I doing this, I would rather be doing something that makes me happy’ does not occur to you?

An online survey conducted by Endred-Ipsos in 2016 across 15 countries revealed that 88% Indians reported feeling positive about their jobs! Does this mean that a certain percentage got lucky, or should we consider a more probable explanation - that they figured their way around their work-life by understanding the challenges and resolving them? The truth is, to attain such a nirvanic height, individuals needs to personally invest themselves in the job. And by putting themselves out, by going out of their way, they not only embark on a journey to explore solutions that work for them, but also understand how far they are willing to go for their job.

However, if you have given it your all and still feel you are in a rut, then maybe you need to explore options that work for you, and focus on jobs that let you go out and be you. And no, I am not going to launch into a sermon about following your passion and doing things that you love because it’s easier said than done. Nonetheless, should you decide to set on a journey to explore the path of following your passion then I would like to share my thoughts on what it takes to pursue it. Because while the success stories may glint from the outside, there was an incubation period where the heroes in the stories underwent pain, disappointment, confusion, and even failures when they did not conform to social constructs and decided to create their own paths.

While passion is what propelled them to pursue what they believed in, honesty keeps them anchored and helps them grow because it keeps the conscience in check. Companies, employees and investors who are looking at partnerships will always value honesty. Honesty in terms of dealings, performance, operations, and people. And passionate people don’t like their passion they hold in high regards, being tampered with, and are obsessed about doing things the way they should be done, without deploying shortcuts. For instance, the recent story of 23-year-old Trishneet Arora who was so busy obsessing over computers and technology that he missed studying two subjects, hence didn’t appear for them, failing 8th standard despite being a smart kid. This didn’t deter him from pursuing his passion and today his ideas form guidelines for corporates like Reliance, Amul, and the likes, helping him build a multimillion-dollar business at the mere age of 21!

Passion is also what drives patience – a virtue we seem to be losing in today’s ‘instant’ world. Chinese business magnate, Jack Ma went through a series of ups and downs, faced multiple rejections until he became the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group. Had he given up earlier, he would have never founded Alibaba. We seem to forget that following a passion is a marathon run and not a 100m sprint. And all marathon runs require years of intense preparations, grit and determination and multiple failures to match up to the existing players. So give it your best, let go of all inhibitions and pack in a punch. You may wear yourself out but no one can take away the fulfillment you will feel that you at least tried. You had the courage to go out and be yourself and do what you wanted to.

But should you be willing to risk everything, risk everything because you believe in it and are absolutely convinced. Because all this hard work should not be for a fleeting moment of glory that cannot be trusted. And that’s why glory should never be the objective; it can only be the consequence. A consequence of your passionate efforts and conviction.

So I say stop the should I, would I, could I. Take the plunge and take it hard. Don’t be afraid to be yourself, to understand your passion and to understand if you have the fight in you to follow it through. It’s an arduous journey where the destination doesn’t count as much as the journey. But don’t make the rookie mistake of plunging in blind. Observe and absorb all that’s happening and is related to your passion. You will need to track the market, identify the existing gaps and analyze the gap you can resolve by just being yourself. By just becoming one with your passion. This leads us back to the question in the beginning about exciting Monday mornings – now you know the solution. Explore, invest yourself, live unfettered - just Go Out And Be.

(Sanjay Modi is the Managing Director at Monster.com, APAC & Middle-East. This is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)