The Journey is as Sweet & Exciting as the Destination

 

The Beautiful Journey Towards Success

Smart work does not replace hardwork to achieve success.

To be a leader, to grow to that level, you should have done all the work that you are going to then, at that stage, supervise. Your hands on experience much earlier in your career will help you confidently take future roles.

Sadly, the generation in their 20s, so many of them, do not resonate with this concept. This is purely my observation over a few years and I am open to any logical argument, if you propose otherwise. May be this interaction and observation of mine is limited to the call centre industry that I've been associated with beyond 4 years now.

After finishing swanky MBAs or engineering degrees too, a large number of pass-outs come to join BPOs as a Customer Care Agent. Where, I do very much respect all types of jobs, at the same time, I feel waste of a college seat, waste of money, time and talent should not be done. After a great degree, unfortunately done under the force of family or due to peer pressure,  they do not enter the same career in the job market. Sometimes they do not get a suitable job or they get something which they start disliking.

In my interactions with these youngsters, I have noticed their thin tolerance and patience levels towards their career growth. I believe in this strongly that 'Rome was not built in a day'. Everything takes time to build, grow and mature. Be it human mind, a relationship or even a career. It takes hard work as much as smart work. Many say that smart work is much required to reach good heights in your career. I feel hard work and learning the basics is equally important. Interns and executives of less experience, many-a-times may have to start maintaining records, learn filing and even scan or xerox. These are also parts of one's job. However, I have heard words like 'I want to quit as I'm not learning much', 'My supervisor is not extending me support and teaching me anything new.', 'I don't see any growth, although its been 6 months I am working here.' , or 'I do not add value and contribute strategically to the organisation, my role does not excite me enough.'

To all these people, please rethink. I repeat, I don't doubt your smartness or demean any job or occupation. I just feel there is a grave lack of patience and a sense of restlessness in many of us now-a-days. Yes, its true time flies and years pass by and you feel stagnated. But it all happens to you at the right time. Another observation is that we tend to compare with a friend who passed out in a similar scenario, year and that weakens our confidence if they are doing better than us. I would put it this way, to compare in a competitive spirit isn't wrong. But unhealthy mental dialogues would lead to sulking feelings and in turn high standards of expectations from self. This is self jeopardizing.
So if you think you want to quit that first job or the internship because according to you, you are 'not making an impact' or 'not having a purpose there' or 'not finding it inspiring' or 'not contributing towards the organization strategy' , anything like that, then first define your terms and then reset your perspective. What is it that you mean by impact, purpose, inspiring or contribution to strategy? So these things are just not abstract concepts. Yes they are real and that feeling of conquering the mountain is enthralling. But for the mountain to be conquered, we have steps that we climb and rest, there are stages of struggle and periods of slow down, pause and at times even rethink the strategy.

So breathe and enjoy the moment, the journey is as sweet and exciting as the destination.