A mentor - The Strategic necessity and why I became one

After all these months that people generally thought I am mad, I think the time has come to give an explanation of what I am doing and why. I have become a mentor, after leaving my job, my career and the positions that are quire a dream for most of the people. But the point is that I have done it after I have prepared myself for years on.

I’ve learnt most of the things I know the hard way on the streets of life, by trial and error in my endless personal search for a way of life. It was almost like being a steam engine, scooping up water as it runs. I also ran like that for decades, mostly to survive, in search of an identity, in other times to prove a point to myself or in pursuit of happiness, but sometimes with desire, mostly wild and not definite ones.

Now, after running with all I had for almost 20 years and achieving almost everything I could hope for, I know what I really lacked at the word GO. It was a mentor, a guide who would help to some basic facts of life – secrets which lay in the open yet very few people are aware of them or their importance for the success in all we try to do. Now I know that even while running with all the passions you have, you need a direction, a goal and a definite desire, not a mere one.

Let me go deeper on one point as an example. Talking about goal, have any of you have ever really given a deep thought about how do we decide? What kind of parameters we usually use or how dumb we normally act to take an all-important decision of life? I believe, 99% of the people take at least 95% of all their important decisions on the wrong notions and parameters and with an undue haste. Then they suffer patiently for years and decades as the fallouts of those hasty decisions they refused to delay for a few days to think.

I will give a few examples to make my point. I have seen a friend falling in love in 2 hours and then suffer in that relationship for 2 years. Another guy, a talented painter who wanted to go to the Art College, was pushed by his Businessman father to Commerce. Today, he is a CA, partner of a firm and spends most of his time painting. Another of my friends, a true music-lover, married a complete mismatch of a girl just because she was a Sangeet Prabhakar or something. As far as I know, in the 15 years of their marriage, she only shouted and never sang. Of course, she learned music for marriage, and now she is married.

Young people often try to set their dream career on a feeling of wild wish, say to be a Pilot as that seems the highest thing in the world, or according to parental wish, social respectability & probability of getting a plum job. Neither them nor their parents mostly care about their passion, flair & interest. Nowadays everybody wants to go into IT sector, where I have seen more than half of the people disillusioned, dissatisfied and remorseful but they go on toiling only for the money and for the lack of choice.

I spent most of my life to gather the pieces one by one, sucking up the experiences of a thousand people on the streets. I always learnt from mistakes, at huge costs. I understand now that a mentor could have given me much of these on a platter long ago and in a more structured way, and that too at a very little cost. It’s almost like an MBA from a top B-school being the Marketing manager at a salary of 10 Lacs at the age of 24 and another guy spending 20 years at the field to reach the Asst manager position at 42 at a salary of 6 lacs.

I have no regrets regarding my past. I do not have any more point to prove. I was born a fighter and I have fought well and valiantly, in spite of all odds. I have seen life from many angles and fronts and finally reached a level of contentment and enlightenment that has made my past irrelevant to me any more. It seems to me nowadays like a different birth or just looking at a different man. But now, I want to share my real life and enriched experiences with the next generations, the youngsters. For almost a decade, I am having this definite and strong desire to touch their lives and to transform them. Then at least they will not have to go through the hell that I have gone thro’, not live in the dark tunnels that felt like there was no light ever, not have to suffer the agony and pain that was my life at one time, like many other people, not have to sail without a proper hull or rations as the life will take them in line with the currents and the gales. But even as I decided to act on this definite desire, it took me nearly 8 years of hard work to be prepared., to reach the level of wisdom, to reach this level of control on my being, to reach this state of enlightenment where I have the power to touch someone’s life and transform it.

After I myself got a training somewhat on this line 8 years ago, this has been my passion and obsession. I have spent years studying, thinking, planning, writing, communicating, meditating, practicing, training and above all, being in complete contemplation under the BodhiTree, which is my own being. I have been in touch with many of the few Gurus who are there in the related fields in India, Sanjay Salooja, Shiv Khera, Shree Shree Ravishankar, Dr. Somesh Chaddha and also Richard Saldan in USA. I have trained under them, communicated with them and been blessed by their wisdom and powers. I did not care for the cost, in terms of more career opportunities, money, time or comfort, in search of this true wealth. But I was learning fast and my own attitude was being transformed. I became much more organized, energized, stable, clam, understanding, caring and balanced. I spent much lesser time with my family and friends but the relationships bloomed like they had received the necter. I had a new coat for an attitude and I had finally found the secrets of successful and beautiful relationships and needed very less but quality time with them.

After many hectic but fulfilling years, one morning, I woke up very early and saw the beautiful first light of the breaking dawn coming through the curtains and giving my room a mystic misty shade, I knew I am finally ready, at least to begin the journey. I have the light. I called up my friend Richard over at lunch and told him, he simply said “Yes, I had the same experience”. I resigned my very lucrative job, something that’s a final dream for too many people, and came back. Some people called me mad but I have little use of the opinion of those people who cannot even communicate with their own self that they will do it with my being.

I organized and stitched up a team of people who shared the passion and the desire to help the young people and had the brilliance to be able to do so. I was fortunate to find out experts as advisors in some key areas where I needed help and the areas where we needed more research. The uniqueness of the course was a challenge because nobody else conducts such a course. The few people who are the Gurus in this field, generally take up the seminars for the corporate people, who can pay the astronomical fees and the seminars were more tuned to polish up and fine-tune the middle and senior level employees, mostly by external motivators and techniques to improve their productivity, with the ultimate objective of indirect benefits to the Company. Those are the Personality Development and Soft Skills programs that work on the external characteristics rather than the internal basics of the people, the inner consciousness and the Value system that give rise to true success and happiness. I wanted to take a completely different view towards this all along, to take the deep-rooted value-based principle-centric approach of the older generations, professed by Napoleon Hill before the World war II and Dr. Stephen Covey in the recent decades, but that again had to be customized for the young people.

All these roadblocks had to be surpassed, but I knew I had to do that and so I did and here I am, today. I will not get back the beautiful years that I lost, and I do not need them now any more with the later enrichment, but I will ensure that the pain does not envelop anybody who will seek, who will submit and who will ask for my shelter.