BIRLA IN OUR LIVES #IIMTRICHY

How did I overcame challenges to achieve my ambitions ?

I had this problem of being a shy person who avoids talking in front of an audience or talking en English with important people to get some kind of work done. I was not an introvert. I could make friends easily but whenever it came to do a work of high importance, I faltered primarily due to my speaking skills. And that was the reason, I always felt that I could not achieve anything significant in life. But life changed after I joined NIT Rourkela for my engineering. It was heavily student driven institute and the student council had to arrange a lot of things. Though I had a knack of organising and managing events pretty well, I always stayed behind the curtains and never really interacted with people. But a friend of mine requested me to be a part of the organizing committee of a national level festival. It was during that time I decided to come out of the comfort zone and face the music. I went on to become the primary point of contact in the fest. I was able to talk to a lot of industrialists and businessmen to close deals for partnership with our college. I even interacted with many celebrities and received a lot of appreciation from them for being such an efficient manager. This was one of the turning points in my life. For someone like me, who had come from a humble background, speaking to people of high repute and commanding an entire team was something I could only dream of those days. But just a minor change in my attitude and a leap of faith to come out my comfort zone literally charted my career path for me. I became heavily involved in the student activities and went on to become the secretary of my undergrad college. I had realised that joining a management program would be the best possible option for me owing to my great management and leadership skills. It was that renewed faith in myself that I was able to study hard for all the entrance examinations and end up at Indian Institute of Management, Tiruchirappalli which remains a dream for many others. For many people, reaching this position in life might be because of the hard work they did and their perseverance. But for me it will always be that one decision to take the leap of faith to come out of the cocoon.