Let’s start with a question. What comes to your mind when you read - “are you being impacted or are you impactful?”
Especially working ladies, think a little about this.
These words can help you understand where you are currently in your career stage.
How impacted are you by what’s happening around you?
It is what determines your work.
It stops your learning.
It distracts your focus.
It provides excuses for you not to own your career
OR
Are you:
Driven by your passion.
Shaping the course of your work and your team or company’s.
Always eager to learn and thus are picking from your environment, adding to your skillset and looking for opportunities to use them.
Focused on your career goals and finding ways to achieve them.
If you are in the former category, then do read ahead as it is time to make the shift from being impacted to being impactful.
But, you would ask, how do we do that?
I love the gears analogy. Even the smallest gear plays a critical role and can help keep the biggest gears (in size) in motion.
A Mentor
A mentor acts as a catalyst and an inspiration. They may be physically distant but can still provide critical feedback and criticism that others closer to you might hesitate in giving. A mentor is that gear which will play a smaller role; smaller in terms of time investment but is essential to keep the machine working. I credit my mentors with my growth, my ability to take risks and my resilience to stay on track with my aspirations
Opportunity
I believe opportunities are always there and are ample in quantity. Some might take you far and ahead and some might be slow and steady. It’s a crucial part of the journey and hence you should be on the lookout for them. Once you find the right opportunity, just grab it with both hands and never let go.
Passion
Finally, something that’s completely yours, and honestly that’s the biggest gear. This has to come from within you and often it comes when our work is aligned to our purpose and interests.
To begin any resolve you need the passion to grow.
To sustain the change, you need passion to reach your goals.
To overcome failures, you need the passion to succeed.
These three gears will individually help you a lot. But put together, they will turn you into a juggernaut on the quest to do great things in your career.
I learned this from Nitya Shanti about 10 years back and this still holds true for me for anything and everything, even the stomach!
Blog by Kiran Chhabra
5th April 2022
Kiran Chhabra has over 19 years of experience leading development, architecture and delivery of large-scale distributed web and mobile applications. She has led the Jobseeker engineering team at Naukri.com for the past 10 years. Kiranholds a US patent. She is an Agile evangelist and has presented at several conferences across India.