Making your work-life meaningful and fulfilling and inspiring
Making your work-life meaningful and fulfilling
Work is the most important aspect of life — the more we are engaged in meaningful activities and pursuits — the better quality of life we have.
The fulfilled people are involved in pursuing the calling of their-life — however this is a choice rare people get to pro-actively select and go-for.
Most of us have to go through the long-wired impulses-test-try-hit-miss and find what makes us feel great about ourselves — and yet many of us might not find it at all.
Whether you believe it or not — quality of work that you are involved in defines the quality of your life
Only after 30 years of professional experience — I can somewhat identify what is worthwhile and what are insignificant.
Every change in my life — disrupted the status-quo in big-way and made me explore and find newer opportunities in completely different and unknown fields.
I have been an entrepreneur, worked as an employee, created a start-up, as an employer, as an external-consultant, as a supplier and ALSO had many-many years of being jobless — in different phases.
My professional-career is filled with massive-failures as well as big-triumphs.
I have accepted challenges and delivered results in the large projects — like reducing villagers’ unrest against a corporate [which was politically instigated and supported] + setting-up of Raymond in Middle-east + Setting up and implementing 6sigma and lean in an almost without-schooling workforce most of them women + Starting and running an institute of Singapore government recognized for Hotel Management
My 1st wife’s death[ because of an accident] leaving me with my 6 month old-daughter — completely killed my aspirations to migrate to Canada.
This also created huge-pain — which I mitigated by learning counseling from one of the best NGOs and later counseling domestically-abused women till I completed my grief-cycle — to reach.
This opened the door for me to get into mentoring the small-medium business owners to help them overcome their challenges and achieve results in very tough-competitive situations in fluctuating economy.
Which in turn created the pathways for me to start consulting-business through Performance-Coaching-top executives, Training, Mentoring, hand-holding and helping the stakeholder take-actions real-time — till the expected and acceptable results are achieved.
I have failed big-time AND also succeeded in incredible-manners.
Have earned-big and manage to lose them all.
Right-now I am struggling to find something that will make me earn enough to sustain my waning years of life
Now at 59 — I am looking for professional-assignments — in a new field — because my earlier experiences, exposures, skills and competencies plus expertise — may or may not be useful for finding something that fits my personality because of changes in the working-environments due to covid19.
I keep myself occupied through online-counseling, reading writing blogs on my two websites and household-chores — while learning to manage the symptoms of autoimmune-disorder.
Work for me is — creating personal-bliss — through doing things that makes me come alive — this happens — when I am doing any of the following
1. Adding positive-value to other
2. Creating meaningful differences in the life of others
3. Helping others become the best that they can be
4. Learning and growing through taking challenging assignments — which makes me reinvent myself
5. Writing blogs [I have written 600+ blogs on my two websites] — they may not be the best BUT they would be near the top quality-wise and value-addition and practicality-wise
6. PLUS 1000+ answers on Quora got 2 million+ views AND 250+ videos on YouTube]
7. Even if no one reads my blog — I feel happy if I have been able to write something that is unique and actually gives others idea — how to solve their problems themselves]
My Definition of success — got fine-tuned through my accomplishments, failures, faux-pas
1. Going into unknown-uncertain-disrupting situation
2. Experimenting and trying out ideas
3. Bouncing-back from failures
4. Learning from mistakes
5. I attempted-large goals — accomplished big — failed also big-time -LIKE — I took 20000 people through one large corporate intervention + Managed to eliminate villager’s unrest against a company + After technical-failures in 3 consecutive batches managed to regain and up market share to 30%
6. Created incredible outcomes
7. Experienced life by experiencing both side — living in luxury as well as experienced living without any money [almost]
My life-odyssey
I have tried to give entire story in sequence and although I have put under different questions — they are part of the whole story
1. Immediately after I finished my post-graduation — my father had to quit working because of his much troubling angina.
2. He got a lump-sum amount of Rupees 1.5lacs from his employer in 1984 as gratuity for his life’s work — there was no other deposits or savings [or any other property or asset — for all 5 of us — me, my parents and two sisters who were in college and whose studies were still funded by my father].
3. Because he always wanted to start a poultry-farm — we decided to start a poultry farm and went to a place called Jhansi which has a cantonment and is surrounded by many big army-cantonment in nearby towns.
4. I assumed [under the arrogance of recent graduates — with know-it-all air] that because ARMY is a big-consumer [under the arrogance of qualification — wrongly of-course] — we will be overnight-success and our business cannot fail.
5. We did not do any surveys or even talked to people in ARMY who were supposed to be our target-customer — or other poultry-farm owners Mistake number 1 in Hindsight
6. Did not even doing the retail market study — My Mistake number 2 in Hindsight.
7. Then I invested almost 60% of the aforesaid amount in constructing the farm — [on a land owned by someone I knew — who said that he does not need this land and that we can have this land for free — I accepted with full trust — without signing any documents and agreements or contracts [what he said fully without even having any doubt that the words are fully reversible] — My Mistake number 3 in Hindsight
8. Then we started running the poultry farm — mind you none of us knew anything about what to do or have consulted any expert or taken any training My Mistake number 4 in Hindsight
9. We kept on experimenting — which proved to be very expensive financially for us
10. Then only after we invested in construction and got the chicks — and started running the farm — I focused on marketing — My mistake number 5 in Hindsight [marketing should have been the first thing to do even before we thought of spending any amount]
11. Then when I landed in Jabalpur — where the Army-tenders are floated — I found two things to my horror — one that there is a big-mafia [who threatened me openly to go back or face dire-consequences] PLUS that the cost the army is getting the supply is almost three-times our cost [because we fed the most expensive and balanced food to our chickens].
12. I came back and decided to go for retail selling — again the cost was more than our selling price and at last we started our own shop — but because of not knowing how to manage staff they stole us blind.
13. After 2 years our total deposit of money reached to Rs.15,000/- with day-to-day expenses to take care and both the sister’s marriage also had to be managed.
14. When we asked for the money for our construction — the person who owned the land refused
15. Then I started applying and within 3 months manage to land a job with General Motors in Middle east — and I left my parents and sisters with Rs.5,000/- total amount to manage their expenses.
My journey as an employee — while working with GM, JC and Raymond
1. After getting the job with General Motors — I spent only what was minimum and ensured that my parents lived comfortably — then within few years saved enough money to take care of expenses for both sister’s marriage.
2. Later I joined Johnson Control and managed to get 30% market-share of entire middle-east market
3. After that I joined Raymond and established their operation out of India by setting up their retail chains in Muscat-Dubai-Abu Dhabi — managed to create significant in-roads in the market dominated by Japanese, British and European brands and supplied even to Emirates and few big Royal-ministries and Army.
4. After three years at Raymond — and after 1 & ½ years of marriage[where we stayed together only for 12 days at the time of marriage] — in 1997 when I came to take my wife and daughter of 6 month old — my wife met with an accident and passed-away the same night
5. At that time all my ambitions and plans just vanished — I had already submitted the documents for migration to Canada — through my Ambassadorial connections acquired through Raymond
6. Then there was only one thing to do — I took care of my daughter with the help of my parents-sisters-nieces
7. During the grief-cycle I got trained myself in counseling from one of the premier and most respected NGO in India and counseled pro-bono for 18+ months to domestically abused women.
8. Then I took a franchise of an American leadership company LMI and while selling these products — got introduced to many top decision-makers — although I could not even recover even half the amount I invested — instead I spent lots of money while marketing
9. But two of these small-medium business owners — asked me to help them overcome — their business-challenges — which I did
10. After that I got into training-coaching-counseling — free-lancing — after many years of struggle to learn and create a niche — I managed to get few MNCs as my client — and did workshops-training programs — other interventions in 10+ countries.
11. In 2012 — I went to Singapore and met a woman who was divorced and had a daughter — we became intimate and it turned into marriage within 4 weeks — which proved to be a very-very wrong decision — as my daughter’s career was completely destroyed and she was emotionally-mentally tortured by my Ex — I also started realizing that my Ex have few psychological issues — I tried various therapy but nothing happened.
12. In Singapore — I created a Singapore-government recognized Hotel-management institute as well as started a CBSE Indian school, besides these I also established ourselves as small-scale industries consultant — both had to close down because of governmental regulation change.
13. Then when I learned of my daughter being tortured [yes I did not know because I used to stay in Singapore for 15 days and in India for 4–6 weeks all throughout.
14. Then we went for divorce — and as a part of agreement — I had to leave everything all that I had earned there — that was almost all that I had.
15. Then we came back to India — I did not have any clients and my daughter’s qualifications was not recognized in India — it’s being one of the UK chartered accountancy out of three which she completed in Singapore.
16. Somehow I managed to start the income trickling — but it was not even 30% of earlier.
17. My daughter through her own determination got a job in one of the Big4s.
18. After coming back from Singapore — to easy my pain initially — later because I started enjoying it — I wrote in Quora [got more than 2 million views of my answers] plus I sated my two websites https://successunlimited-mantra.com/ [1.5 million hits] and http://relationshipandhappiness.com/ AND also am involved in Pro-Bono online Mentoring-Counseling-Coaching — to Individuals-womenpreneurs-startups
