Reminiscence via Reflection

Three months invested right can do more than a whole one year, period.

Have you ever felt stuck? What did you do to get rid of that stuck-feeling?

A single learning experience can untangle all tangles. Don’t believe me? Well, let’s go and read my Amal journey.

During my Amal journey, I had two incidents which made a very clear impact on my well being. Working on a megaproject can be quoted as the most impactful incident and a conversation with my program manager on a topic which used to hinder my growth. The topic was ‘ how people perceive me when I do something?”.

Megaproject

For a pretty long time as I could remember I had been feeling kind of stuck. I didn’t know the cause. I have always been an active person when it comes to working. But from some time I could feel the hindrance.

During the fellowship when our mega project was started we all teammates were on the same ground i.e. Doing a profitable project to solve a problem, filling a gap in our surroundings. At first, we all were a bit hesitant with each other because of the obvious reasons i.e. we all were new to this project, to each other.

Two weeks into the project and I started feeling a sudden rush of energy again in me, which for many months was missing and I used to continuously question myself for that state with “have I lost all the motivation to do work?”.

My mega project group consist of students with different educational background. They all kind of seem to have similar goals like mine i.e. learning, learning from each other. They were all there to learn and willing to collaborate with each other’s creative side. The entire journey of the megaproject, or working with such people has been wonderful, full of collaboration, energy fulfilling.

The loop of overthinking

This thought/action process of mine developed over the years. Earlier I used to fight this out. But recently it had become so much of me that I didn’t realize that it had started hindering my progress, my growth.

Amal journey started I could feel the existence of the hesitation when speaking or contributing my part. I had no idea how to eliminate it. Days passed on and we were into our 10th week of amal journey.

Amal Academy has a one-on-one session thing in which every fellow could connect with the program manager, discussing his/her concerns. I decided to opt for this opportunity and discuss my loop of overthinking. I marked a date for this session with my program manager.

Initially, I was confused about explaining this hesitation. I wrote a few chunks of hesitation in my notepad.

The conversation started and I stated all my thinking process to my program manager. And she started unravelling the thinking process to simplest. The entire 51-minute talk on-call can be concluded in the points mentioned below. She stated in total three points which have helped me a lot since that talk.

When saying something, think on parameters of “Potential hurt to people”. Only resist saying or doing something if that thing can hurt someone.

Look at the absolute (big) picture, not relative (small) picture. Don’t say/act on something if it fits the situation for a temporary period.

Prioritise people in your life in these three category: I care ‖ I’ve no problem ‖ I don’t care. This will help you decide your acts/sayings.

The things I’ve learned along this journey are…

Keeping interactions with people does keep a person internally alive and active. Being an introvert is ‘me time’ in which one can take some alone time to recharge his/her batteries, but keeping interactions with people is essential too.

Every learning opportunity has its value, No learning opportunity goes to waste — People, even youth, today doesn’t realize much the need for such learning opportunities. These people think of themselves as ‘smart’. Ignoring such facts isn’t smart at all.

Leaving the loop of overthinking — Don’t think twice when you feel the need of acting upon something which doesn’t hurt anybody either. Either you’ll learn something or someone can. People will perceive you as they are in real themselves.

The entire journey of Amal Academy has been a blessed one. In fact a needed one in my case. I wish this could continue for the next three months too, but as the saying goes…

“Every good thing comes to an end.”