Human beings can’t live, survive or even learn without connecting with other human beings. And I feel, when it comes to relationships, friendships are the most important and formative as we grow and learn the most from them. Our former President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam had said, “One best book is equal to hundred good friends but one good friend is equal to a library.” I also have many friends from my childhood, I have learned a lot from each one of them and realised that when they are with me I require nothing more to live. I see a friend as a teammate on my life’s journey, a mentor, a supporter and at the same time as a critic who’ll tell me when I am going wrong and help me correct myself.
I recently embarked on the Changelooms journey, conducted by the organisation, Pravah. Their main motto is to assist initial level organizations by helping them self-reflect on organization structure, value, vision on how to build a culture for a sustainable future. It also pays more emphasis on the personal journey as an organization is not like a machine, it is an evolving thing and a live entity which runs through vision, culture and emotions of each person involved.
I attended their development induction training where 10 initial level organisations had been selected from different parts of India through the rigorous interview process, from each organisation two people had come for this training so my colleague Abhishek and I attended the workshop on behalf of our organisation Teach For Green. It was an 8-day workshop, the first day was a meet-and-greet where it was amazing to know about other attending organisations and their work. As Abhishek and I also didn’t know each other quite well apart from work, it was a good time for us to catch up.
My best learning experience through this workshop was that we are all battling stereotypes and challenges at our workplace, alongside family expectations, but we really do need to reflect and trust our intuition when times get tough. It is okay to hear out different points of views but we should feel confident to make our decisions. We need to face adversities head-on and make the most of a situation.
This workshop also helped us tackle our fear of trying something new at work and helped us focus on the root cause of this fear and eventually overcome it. This workshop was a kind of self-reflection for me where I focused on sharing my feelings when a situation arises and not hold on to it after the moment passes.
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