Actuate your passions

At practically all workplaces, you will always find people at any workplace - seniors, colleagues and subordinates – invariably throwing smiles and exchanging greetings. However, more often than not, they will not make efforts to find out if your career is on the correct course or not. This fact should be taken cognizance by you; the responsibility to oversee your career is yours and yours alone.  

There was this young man Gaurav. Though he was an electronic engineer by profession, he was not really contented at what he was doing and always wished that he could engage himself in a pursuit that gave a boost to his geniality. As an engineer, he thought that his work was a sort of an impediment to his true persona. Gaurav took a bold decision and resigned his job to set up a café. His amiability and geniality made him popular and his café started doing good business. Today, he has a chain of cafes.  

Take the case of Pranav. As a student, he was a dynamic personality and participated in various debates and elocution contests. After doing his graduation in commerce, he got selected for a managerial post at a bank. Within a span of four years, Pranav became a branch manager. But his inner voice told him that he ought to be in the teaching profession. He was promoted to the Chief Manager’s post and transferred. Not wanting to be relocated, Pranav resigned and joined a public speaking coaching institute as an instructor. Today he owns a reputed soft skills training institution specializing in soft skills.     

We also have the case of Monica, an MBA. She met with an accident and suffered disabilities. Due to health reasons, she could not attend her office regularly. So her employers hired somebody else. She accepted her fate, but was not willing to sit idle. Monica decided to join a voluntary organisation engaged in taking care of poor people who had disabilities.  

There are some remarkably common characteristics in the career graph that all high flyers. While their professional matters and leisure issues are generally not coupled, their work is more of an impairment rather than an architect for personal contentment. High-fliers, obviously do well professionally, but harbour other objectives, as a result of which, they suffer from a lack self-accomplishment. The outcome is that they cannot strike a good sense of balance between their fortes and participations. It has also been seen that they did little planning in the initial stages of their career, but after going through the rut woke up to the need to set their career on a correct course. This the time when they become aware of something going awry and when discontentment starts creeping in; the discontentment tends to grow because of organisational constraints.

If you look around, you will find several Gauravs, Pranavs and Monicas who want to be at the wheels of their lives and careers alike. Various provoking causes notwithstanding, mid-lifers like Gaurav, Pranav and Monica make plans and schemes to invigorate their personal lives. They undertake a journey of a thousand miles, afflicted with particularities and oddities. However, the truth is that they do not loosen their grip over their own movements and take bold decisions when it comes to bringing about changes to their life. In other words, giving wings to their passions is natural to them.

Do you also want to emulate Gaurav, Pranav and Monica? Do you also want to give wings to your passions?  To be able to do so, the onus of taking a bold decision in this context is yours alone. It should be appreciated that the process to re-kindle passion and zest is not a very difficult matter. If you follow the following techniques, your attainments will be remarkable:

· Recognition: The first phase is to discern what you think is important for you and based on which, you will have to decide on a line of action. This line of action should include what you aspire for in the immediate future. Once attained, they will be stepping stones to achieve your long-term objectives. Just as Gaurav who came to terms with the redundancy of the engineering profession as pertinent to him, corporate principles were applied to his café. Gaurav learnt the practicalities of managing an eatery and whenever required, he had experts to guide him. Evidently, his success was brought about by his meticulousness and sincerity of purpose.  

· Cataloguing: The second step is to make a note of your strengths and weaknesses on one side and penchants and curiosities on the other. Knowing how they complement one another is important together with an evaluation if such balancing out is appropriate or not. You may be undertaking an easy work, but that work per se may be rather boring. Pranav’s case highlights this issue. He spent quite some time imparting training to his friends and acquaintances free of cost. Over a period of time, he realized the complexities of the teaching profession and that training people in the art of public speaking was no cakewalk, but surely a career for which he naturally made out.  

· Boldness: You should know to play with risks while moving ahead with conviction to attain your objectives.  People do realize the importance of mid-term corrections, but yet are apprehensive to apply them. When Monica was relieved of her duties, she never sought ant sympathy from anybody, but promptly made use of her latest liberty. She introspected and adopted a daring position to successfully alter her ill-fated conditions into a new and innovative undertaking that helped her to bring in delight in her career and life.

You must understand that nobody will ever be genuinely concerned about knowing whether you are happy with your life and career. It is your responsibility to do so along with making efforts to know what you lack and finding out ways and means to fill gaps. If that be so, you are moving on your career journey all by yourself. And hence, the journey necessitates quick decision-making ability; needless to state, all your decisions have to be bold. But if you evade shouldering this responsibility, you will never be able to bring about the change that you seek in your life and career.