What keeps me going?

After the 1st semester of my senior year at IIT Kanpur, my engineering degree got extended by a year. This was forthcoming due to my laid-back attitude I had after joining IITK & becoming a curious explorer without purpose.

As a result, I ended up with no internship experience & also lost the opportunity to sit at college placements. Despite these, to my own surprise, I was still the ambitious & determined person as I was before coming to IIT Kanpur. So, I set an ambitious goal of generating an income stream right after college instead of pursuing the ‘usual next-step’ of MBA.

Fast forward today, I have 5 yrs of enriching experience & a brilliant network. The following is the reason I believe kept me going & still does.

In the 8th semester, despite my family’s unspoken worries during hometown visits, I drew a simple inspiration from a book "The Obstacle is the Way: The Ancient Art of Turning Trials into Triumphs" by Ryan Holiday. I had recently read it because of my interest in Stoic philosophy. With this book, I was introduced to the timeless stories of inspirational figures like John Rockefeller & Marcus Aurelius. These stories completely transformed my perception on obstacles & helped me see them as opportunities.

"The Obstacle is the Way" showed me a simple three-step framework of Perceive, Act & Will which I have come to call as PAW(S) with ‘Start again’. Now, when I look in hindsight, I can see the framework’s application in my thoughts & actions at the time.

• Perception: I objectively evaluated what was within my control. I perceived my strengths to be my analytical skills & self-initiative mindset.
• Action: Further, to build a more acceptable profile for internship/job, I immediately assessed my habits, got higher CGPAs to push for 6+, pursued MBA as minor, self-learned Python, audited ML/AI courses & did an undergraduate research project.
• Will: Despite continuous efforts, landing an internship remained elusive. I persevered & saw an opportunity to launch a small entrepreneurial venture “Convo-Kurta”. With this venture, I sold convocation attires during my own graduation & generated over INR 3.6L revenue with 2 other partners.

Around 1 week after the venture, I built trust with a startup incubated at IIM Bangalore for an internship to learn more about the startup world which didn’t care too much about what you did before but rather how big you can think & fast you can move.

Since then, I have been continuously applying the PAW(S) framework wherever I can. While I have come to realise that stoicism don’t apply in all facets of life, it has given me an empowering mindset to never look at myself as a victim, keep my ‘PAWS’ sharp & grab adversarial opportunities. Also, I became an avid reader for life with a strong belief in the power of stories. The rest is a meandering journey of a macro-optimist, micro-analytical & above all still a relentlessly curious soul.

If you read till the end, I would love to know what keep you going. Reach me out here or here.