The 5 most important question about the purpose that I get asked during my coaching sessions are the following:
What is the purpose of a purpose?
Does Maturity come with age or experience?
How do I know my purpose in life?
How can I improve my Maturity?
Importance of self-development and personal growth?
My recent podcast can help you get an answer to these tough questions.
To answer these questions, we need to understand what is the meaning of life? & what are lifetime goals?
The biggest thing to understand here is that purpose is not a static thing. Like we have a “product life cycle,” purpose also works in a cycle. once we are at the maturity stage of a purpose, we need to identify another purpose, but to do that, we need “Emotional Maturity.”
“Emotional Maturity” is not the same as “Adolescent Maturity.” To get adolescent Maturity, we need to focus on “personal development skills.”
Let me share with you one of my personal stories.
There was a time in my life when getting into “IIT” became my dream due to a passionate Professor, “Shakti Behera.” He inspired me to get into IIT, and once I got into IIT, I never had a goal beyond that because I assumed my purpose in life is over. As I knew one thing for sure, getting a job is relatively easy if you are in “IIT.” So what is there to worry about anymore?
The outcome of that mindset was that I never focused on studies, and I never focused on my growth in “IIT,” somehow got an excellent job in “ARM.” But now, when I see my life in retrospect, I can feel that I didn’t live to my full potential in “IIT.”
This episode of my life taught me a big life lesson: By the time one project is at the maturity stage, we should be ready to start another project, Which became the rule of my life.
So in my professional career, when I reached my first company, “ARM,” which was a great company to work in.
The Job was amazing. I was into circuit designing, a passion for most of the IITian is to work in a core job, and I was into it.
This time, I do not make a mistake.
I was happy with my Job. I was enjoying it. The salary was decent, and life was awesome, super cool; everything was going well. But I was able to see that there was a void.
I was happy but not fulfilled. That zing and charm were missing. The pursuit of accomplishing something great was missing.
Some tough questions started wringing in my mind:
what is my purpose in coming to this company?
I started visualizing, and once I started doing that, I remember talking to myself, Bijay, let’s not repeat the same mistake of “IIT.” The time has come to find the next goal.
There is a saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.“
I was in the forum mall in Koramangala. In that mall, there is a book store, “Landmark.” I went into it and stumbled upon this book, “Think & Grow Rich.”
The title book was fascinating. It was talking about dreams, desires, goals, and they were so daunting for me that I didn’t know what to do with them.
But one thing started happening in my mind. I realized I am not getting the dreams of electrons in my life. Neither am I getting some crazy architecture in my dream. I am not the next scientist who will produce a new processor or a memory chip.
I realized I was enjoying my job, and I was able to see, fast forward, that I am not meant to be an employee alone. But then the question comes, what do I do? I started thinking.
Now I was in phase No. One: Where I am not clear what my goal is. I had no clarity about my vision, but I started understanding that working in the VLSI industry is not my goal for sure.
So what do we do now? I started thinking. I started experimenting. I started doing some tutions. I started doing some crazy stuff. I started doing some freelancing work, and one year passed by.
All of my friends were just busy partying on weekends. They were waiting for weekends, and I was also waiting for the weekend. The difference was only one. They were busy doing some parties or some fun or taking a rest. But I was waiting for the weekend to start something of my own.
I started experimenting. Eventually, one fine day after doing many experiments for two years, I found a business that I can do along with my Job. But there was a problem. The challenge I faced was. I was not having the skill set required to run a business.
A business needs what?
A business needs Sales and marketing.
You might be a techie guy, you might be making the best technical app in the world, but that technical app will not sell automatically.
That is the biggest myth, which a lot of techie guys have. They believe if I created the best product in the world, it should sell automatically. Now, let me tell you, nothing in this world will sell ever automatically. It means if you have to sell something, you need to work hard for it.
I invested two years in sales and marketing, and I was miserable with it. But you know what? Two years later, I got a grip on it, and I started growing my business.
Then I realized one day, now the time has come to switch the gears and move on full-fledged into the business.
It was the 5th of Feb, 2014; I moved on from a high-paying VLSI job.
When I started working full time, in two years, my business grew almost three times. And now again, A question comes, Bijay, is this all in your life?
The answer to this question was “NO.”
Doing a Business and Making money is not all for my life.
Now the journey from Success to significance begins.
Now when I recollected these are the switches that I took in my career:
School Dropout to Govt Engg College
Govt Engg College to IIT
IIT to high paying corporate Job
Corporate Job to Business.
Now again, a shift?
That’s what life is. We need to evolve ourselves, or else we will be stuck with Success.
The absolute joy is not in Success. It’s in the journey towards significance.
To get the more juicy part of the story, you can go through my 10 mins podcast.
If you are also looking for mentorship and coaching, drop me an email at “bijay@pim.org.in”, let’s talk.