This morning, as I sat down to write down this article, I realized that Aditya Birla group is indeed big in my life in some way or the other. From the clothes that I wear to the house that I live in contains a part of Aditya Birla and because of this, I feel that I am also a part of the Aditya Birla group in a way that I have been using the products of this group since my childhood and this has contributed in some way, to the growth of the company.
If I talk about specific products offered by this Group, as a first mention, I would like to talk about IDEA cellular. My parents have been using IDEA services since the time they first started using cell phones and I have never heard them complain about the services offered by IDEA ever! In fact, sometimes I have heard them saying “this is the best network in the market! It shows network everywhere we go”. Even when they are visiting our house in the village, they can access the internet, and that makes me very happy because I stay in a different place and it makes things easier.
There are a lot many examples such as the one I have mentioned above, like the beautiful house my parents live in, the first choice for the clothes that I wear and the financial services by the group that my parents invest their hard-earned money in.
In a way I can say that Aditya Birla has been an integral part in my life and in the lives of million others like me and I am grateful for this part of my life.
When I first started working with my last employer, everything was new for me. New city, new people, first time living so far away from parents. It was difficult to take in all these changes at once, the first few days in the office did not helped much either.
I met a lot of people in that city, most of them doing well in life and being happy. It was almost intimidating for me to interact with any of them because I started comparing myself with them the moment I met them, and this caused me great deal of unhappiness.
Days kept passing by and I kept getting miserable. The mails that I wrote, I spent a lot of time reviewing them, I would go through them hundreds of times just to make sure everything sounded like they were supposed to and no part was left out and everything conveyed the correct message, I would not speak up in meetings just for the fear that I would look stupid and that people will start feeling that I am worthless. I got away from my colleagues and I got isolated. Every night when I came back from work I would watch lots of motivational videos to get myself back, to regain that confidence which I had in myself before coming to this place and I would sleep with some motivation to be better the next day only to wake up the next day to go through all that misery again.
More than a year had passed, and all these videos and talks had done nothing but act as a pain killer that helped me sleep at night. I thought I had reached rock bottom. I really had, I think, because when this thought came to my mind, I became aggressive. I started demanding credits for the work in which I had put in so much effort, I started owning my work, which had gone through countless reviews and scrutiny by myself. And because of this, I started explaining my work in meetings and gradually I even started to talk about the requirements of the project that would help me, and my team members work even better. As time passed, the clients started to know me better along with my colleagues and in the next few months when my team lead left for another company, I was given the opportunity to be responsible for the deliveries made by my team, even when my experience did not qualify for the position.
The greatest learning, I had with this experience is that, to be able to achieve something, requires us to take a step towards it, no matter how small and, it is our actions that define us and makes us who we are.