As a child, I have always been docile and accommodative to friends and family. I always had a calm exterior and never complained about things which were not given to me. After completing my college, getting into corporate world was like walking into a jungle, unarmed. I was given a task to handle an entire client for myself at the age of 21 and prepare a Proof of Concept and woo this client to sign a deal with my organization.

Now, for a 21 year old, this was overwhelming, as I had no prior experience talking to even my superiors, leave alone any foreign customers. Adding to my woes was the fact that I did not have any hands on experience in programming. They say, inspirations come from the smallest of things in life. The night I got my assignment, I took the metro, for two arduous hours, jumped into a shared cab and got down for the last stretch of walk back home and it was ten thirty already! What I saw there changed my perception entirely and a feeling of guilt washed over me.

A frail old woman with two drumsticks, a few onions and a handful of almost stale tomatoes, all neatly laid on her sari was patiently warding off flies to sell her remaining stock. When a person as old, as seemingly weak, as alone can still have hope for her sales at eleven in the night, I realised that I had no right to complain or be scared of my journey in the corporate.

From the next day, for almost two months, I toiled night and day to complete my project. I fared fairly well I would say, the clients were impressed, they signed the deal. My boss started trusting me in future projects, my colleagues respected me, and things changed .I realized that challenges need not roar, they may be small roadblocks in your everyday life that you continuously need to overcome.

The real challenge however lies in the CONTINUITY of it! There may be days when I feel drained, when I don’t want to continue, when I doubt myself if I am worth it, but the challenge here is to overcome these questions on a daily basis.

So, I feel that biggest challenge that I have faced and I am still facing are those that arise within me, every day from the smallest of questions that I ask myself to the life changing decisions that I have to make in future. Now, after five years in corporate with a good track record and in a B-School, I know the answer to the challenge of Continuity is to

“KEEP PUSHING ON!”

As Michelle Obama puts it in her book ‘Becoming’, “AM I GOOD ENOUGH?,

“YES I AM “, we all are!!

kalyani_radha123

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