SOMEDAY IS NOT A DAY OF THE WEEK
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase;
just take the first step.”
Matin Luther King
I knew of a very gifted speaker,
trainer and motivator… He was a livewire, and he was extremely dynamic even at
his ripe age. When I first met him, he was 50. And, for the next thirty years
or so, I heard him telling me, passionately, about a book he wanted to write…
He had the story in his head and even the title. Every time he would talk about
it, I would remind him, to start putting his story down on the paper or type on
the computer… “Start now, start writing down even if it means a little portion
of your story.”
That never
happened for three long decades. Now, this gifted man is suffering from advanced
dementia… The story seems to have died in the mind!
“Someday is not
a day of the week.” Yes, Janet Dailey had cautioned us, a long time ago.
Are we waiting
for that ‘Someday’ to show up?
Most likely, it
wouldn’t…
The best time to
start writing our story – and living our dream – is ‘now’…
I met these two friends, last evening. Both have just completed their bachelor’s degree in computer engineering and now teamed up to start a fresh business venture… which, in modern vocabulary, is called a ‘Start-up’. They excitedly showed me their website and Insta page… how they planned to execute their dream, rope in investors, and, eventually, how they would scale it and so on…
The boys have freshly
come out of the oven… But, when I heard them out, I found them unwavering in
their minds – clear in their heads. What I admired the most was, that they were
not just ‘talking’ about their dream, they had already started ‘working’ on it –
I shared with
them my own story… How I had gone about doing what was running in my head at
their age. “Back then, we never called our ‘Self-employment’ as ‘Start-up’,” I said,
“You young kids are bred in the shark tanks.”
‘Start-ups’ or ‘Shark
Tanks’, or just the good-ole ‘self-employment’ – the alchemy is the same. To achieve
what you want, you need to desire it, be determined to realize it, plan and
persevere… and, be ready to stay hungry and stay foolish – as Steve Jobs would
advise the fresh graduates of Stanford University…
Last evening, I
offered the same advice to these two fresh engineering graduates…
We don’t have to
wait till we are able to see the whole staircase… We just need to take the
first step…
Lest our dreams
die…
GERALD
D’CUNHA
Video: Mark Pakula
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