Life Lessons Learnt

Life is full of challenges and every challenge give us an opportunity to perceive life differently

Being a member of  Toastmasters International, I got the opportunity to volunteer a program 'Speechcraft'. This is a programme to enhance Public Speaking skills

Many participants have joined the programme. An interaction with one of them that changed my perspective towards life

After few sessions, he approached me early morning on Sunday and requested me to bring his 5 years old daughter to the session,since she didn't have any caretaker. I was little worried as to how she would be occupied for 3 hours. But he was appeared to be quite confident to manage her

Without much thought I allowed him to come along with his daughter. Later I came to know of the sad truth that he lost his wife few years ago

I was impressed by his dedication to his self growth. I could see his willingness to learn despite having unforseen challenge in his life. He managed to balance his career, personal growth and his daughter as well

Meeting him reinforce me some unforgettable life lessons:

1. Life throws unpredictable challenges at us, we must strengthen our character to handle them

2. We can always find blessing in everything rather cursing ourselves on what we don't have

3.  Positivity is the key to happiness

The Pandemic!

This week I started going to office almost one year later. I felt excited about bgoing back to office even then we had to so many precautons  like maintaining social distancing, working with minimum workforce, using sanitiser and most importantly using the mask all the time. 

While facing the pandemic I thought deeply about  as how it affected nearly everything on planet Earth

We confronted with several crisis like issues like increasing unemployment, slowing down economy, restrictive travelling, losing lives & unprecedented trade wars

While facing the pandemic, it has deeply connected with Hope, Togetherness, Resilience, Trust, Love, Innovation, Patience, Courage, Speed, Agility, Atmanirbhar, Health, Family, Environment that were distant dream before the pandemic.

So after the pandemic passes away, which will, we must never lose sight with these positive traits

We must keep them scripted in our mind and live them all the time. They should be ingrained in our habits within ourselves.

Celebrating Woman's Day!

Today the world is celebrating Woman's day! 

All are engaging in a numerous activities around & taking pause to recognise the value of a woman! I really appreciate & admire the gesture. The aim of this gesture can be bringing the change in terms of equality, respect, honour & love

But the bigger question is, "are we celebrating & recognising every single day?"

I think we need to fundamentally work upon the basics to change the mindset of society. 

I hold the views that in a  country like India the mindset can be transformed through Zero Tolerance Policy, and these could be implemented in the following ways:

1.  If no proper education is given to girls, no jobs & any social security to be provided to the parents at any level

2. There should be a mandatory curriculum on importance of Woman in all classes

3. There should be stricter implementation of POSH(Prevention of Sexual Harassment) act not just at workplace but in society at large

I think the importance of celebrating Woman's day would be more pronouced once we act on these policy going forward

~ K.K

Entrepreneurship!

One day I was listening to wife who is Hindi teacher, instead of taking Hindi lesson, she was talking to students on how to create product differentiation, how to market and sell the products to right set of customers etc

I was just thinking whether I am in my dreams that she exchanged with my profile

Then suddenly amazed to hear that as a class teacher she was giving some project work on Enterpreneurship to students

For my curiosity I got into the detail of frame work of the project

She was giving project assignement to make products made of recyclable, brainchild within team, funding through parents, estimate the costing and finally it should be sold through making sales pitch to parents

Profit amount shall be donated to charity and principal amount shall be returned back to parents

With this amazing initiative, students are learning multiple & practical skills which are normally experienced at corporate level

Basic key skills learnt among tgem are creativity, team building, accounting, selling, branding, caring to environment, philanthrophy, leadership & the most important is learning with fun

I have some thoughts on this experience: 

1. This is new beginning to create minds of job creators rather job seekers in India

2. We should encourage such education to imbibe practical knowldge in each of schools 

3. Such initiative doesn't cost or effort to schools or students. Its matter of taking initiative to change the mindset

I think this is an effort to 'Make In India in Minds of Young India for Better India'

Reflection 2020!

The year 2020 has ended . But the year was unique and unusual for each one of us. The year can be remembered for many reasons and hence it is important for me to reflect and introspect as to how I had gone through the time and which lessons I had learnt:

1.  The year started with positive note when my mentor Mr Robinson D'souza held my hand and agreed to help me in improving my pronouciation. He asked me to practice in Cubbon park in the morning. He was correcting the incorrect words over the phone everyday for 10min. I was reading 'My Experiment with Truth' by Mahatama Gandhi. This experiment was done for a month and it helped me to improve my pronunciation 

2.  The year started on very a positive note because I begin my journey in Auto Division of my company. Culture and class of the division assisted me to explore the auto world that makes the world move 

3. Toastmasters is the platform for improving  not just communication skills but life skills as well. Hence, I got the opportunity to be part of committee as a Treasurer. The learning and experience was immense. Other than accounting, one important aspect that i needed to learn to improve my empathy level. Convincing members for renewal and understanding the difficult time that they were facing during pandemic made me realise that it is important to get in touch with the feeling and thoughts of others to form any opinion.

4. I had always thought and limiting believe of fear of failure and fear of rejection. So I challenged myself to participate in 5 contests like Monologue contest and story telling contest etc,  took different roles, joined other clubs to explore other roles and played a role of contest chair. My participation have overcome my limiting believe and substituted with strong believe of many possibilities 

5. Due to covid, we are highly protected and connected to our family for their health and emotional state of affairs. During this time, I could able to connect with all children of our family and started 'Communication Session' everyday. This was started in April and ran for almost two months. Session was started aiming at building confidence and developing content within children. Everyday session was full of learnings and fun with prepared speeches, extempore, evaluation, quiz, dumb charades, jokes etc. I am happy that within one month time our children improved their thinking, confidence and delivery immensely

6. In professional career, I feel that I contributed to company needs and meet the expectation and differentiated myself. Areas that I brought the change in the company e.g. improving reliasation by getting better price extras, engagement with Sr Management, building capability of downstreams facilities, sustainable business with new accounts 

7. The year was time that I could complete my long pending chore of house registration. This activity helped me to develop the habbit of getting away from procrastinate

8. The year also taught me how to live a life of abundance with gratitude. Many people around us are some or the other helped and assisted in our life to make complete. We must show gratitude for everything that get from others. I am very thankful to my family, my colleagues, Robinson Sir, Surekha Ma'am, Aiyappa, Sreejith, Deepika and many more.

9. I felt happy in voluntarily initiated the process of collating donation for office staff in Diwali. That made me realise that happy is contagious when we do selflessly for others.

10. One thing learnt from BTMC President Aiyappa that be always unreasonable and always try to do what you felt not possible and this can be done in Toastmasters and subsequently in professional and personal life 

So 2020 had been a great year of resilience and always been a year to reflect on our actions. 

Happy Year Ending 2020 and Happy New Year Beginning 2021!

~K.K

Employee Engagement!

We had a special occasion to celebrate this Christmas among our Auto Team online. This was splendid and remarkable effort made by team members. This initiative was a part of employee engagement beyond our day to day work

This initiative taught two valuable lessons:

1. This reminded me dialogue of movie Taare Zameen Per. "Every child has own speciality, potential & liking"

We discovered many young child among our team with different speciality and liking. Many of us have capability of rediscovering new likings, habits & hobbies keeping our childhood alive. This is what I like most that keep us realise that anything is possible in your personal or professional life since each of us is special and precious

2. Normally, employee engagement means meeting physically, have chat, fun & enjoy the time. Even just one year back no one thought of meeting seamlessly on virtual platform and having some sort of fun even at this platform. But nowadays, it is made possible and made us shrink closer to each other and knowing each other better as an individual. Knowing each and being friendly not necessarily we need to meet together physically, virtual meeting can also be substitute

Learnings shall remain with me forever and inspire me to keep rediscovering myself with limitless potential 

~K.K

Overcoming My Fear!

Have ever you experienced that you know something but when it was asked from you in gathering, you could not answer it because of fear of what others may think of me if I am incorrect. 

Yes this happened to me again today.

Today we had an exciting Quality Quiz session in our company. Different teams across the Marketing & Sales function participated in the quiz. The questions were so messimerising to keep the audience and participants spell bounded and excited. Interestingly, the questions were such that difficult to search on google.

There were 5 rounds of questions and after each round or in case participants could not answered the questions, the audience can answer them. In one such round, I was 100% knowing the answer but because of fear that if it is wrong what would other may think. So I could not answered it. Surprising I noticed that persons from Sr Management also tried but answered them wrongly.

Aprat from this situation, many times in my life it happened to me, it is because of fear that is pulling me down or I could not able to speak or I could not able to answer the question or I could not strike a small conversation with others.

So from today's session I learnt a lesson that forget what others may think or judge. Always keep in mind that no person in this world is perfect. Let's flow with rhythm of the situation without caught up in fear of situation.

This way I can overcome my fear. I am sure a small improvement in myself that may have profound impact in my life sooner.

~K.K