Butterfly developing into a maturity stage
Ravi Speaks:
Updated on 05.06.2023.
This story is the amalgamation of three different transformations taking place simultaneously, both within myself and at a new place of work. I worked as a bachelor selling medicines for nine years. The first one deals with my professional segment; the second one deals with the social segment attached to me as a bachelor; and finally, the third and most powerful transformation, which changed my overall personality, is the change coming from within. In the first phase, I started realizing my level of maturity. In the second phase, I started having a ‘phase of uncertainty” associated with me, and finally, after nine long years, I started realizing the attainment of “professional excellence” in my profession of sales and marketing. Through this truthful article, I have tried to summarize these major changes into ten very crucial postulates. Young, yearning people aspiring to make “sales and marketing” their bright career can get valuable inferences from these postulates. These are only my genuine inner inferences.
Top Ten Postulates During Transformation In My Bachelorhood.
It was on March 8, 1982, when I joined the field at Ludhiana, Punjab, as the Medical Representative. I remained there in Ludhiana for almost nine years, and during these nine years, I was just a bachelor. Those nine years were the most eventful years for me, and I consider that period to be the most precious period of my life. So many things happened to me during those years, and each happening left a deep memory in my mind. I was just twenty-one when I came there and was 30 years old when I left that place. But yes, I was a fresher and more innocent person at age 21, but I underwent so many changes in myself and my career that I came out as a mature, cool, and professionally efficient man. Because of my profession, restarting my higher education, and, most importantly, meeting some of my new friends, I have had an indelible impact on me to take the corrective course for my life ahead. This I could only realize after so many years.
Let me now attempt to assess the extent to which major changes occurred during my nine years as a bachelor in Ludhiana. Looking at the all-alone period of bachelorhood, I surely have undergone many good as well as not-so-good changes in my personality. I simply call it a transformational phase. Here are the ten major postulates that I have extracted from my experience and hardship during these nine years:
1. Transformation is a journey without a destination.
This analysis may even be deeper if the introspective approach is applied. Yes, it is a different form of intellect; it is another level of deep self-awareness and self-understanding. Introspection would need mostly lucidity, which is not the same as intelligence. Thus, the lucid approach would be to do the self-examination, analysis, looking at my personality and actions, and considering my motivations. As if I am meditating and trying to understand my feelings. Time spent alone in thought can be positive—a rich environment for personal growth and creativity, but it can also be dangerous when we are negatively turned against ourselves. Introspection can be a process of healthy self-reflection, examination, and exploration, which is good for your well-being and your brain.
2. Get eligible and pass the test of-Personal growth and creativity
I was just a twenty-one-year-old fresher from the university and had no experience of worldly ways to a greater extent, trying to adapt to the new setup in the new atmosphere. I think I did well in picking up the various aspects of life’s responsibilities and carried them out to the fullest of my expectations.
3. It is your enlightenment that reflects your maturity.
It may sound to be philosophical, but the reality is to adapt oneself to the changing set-ups and get your grooving firm in that atmosphere also -you need to be knowing certain basics which you would apply. I mean the maturity started pouring into me with the advancement of time there at Ludhiana and I too started making my circles around. May it be on social fronts or even on professional fronts. This is but natural that anyone -when put to a new atmosphere-he will naturally try to adapt himself there and in the process become an integral part of that new system. So finally, my point here is to prove that my maturity levels got nurtured well. First transformational signal to me for my lucid approach.
4. Uncertainty is the order of the day.
The second important transformational phase- I term as “the phase of Uncertainty”. It was during my initial tenure in Ludhiana when the Khalistan Movement was at its peak. There used to be encounters between Police with terrorists of Khalistan-Liberation-Front daily. As a result, there used to be a good number of casualties happening. I remember one day when I had to go to Khanna by bus, I was forced to change my program as I came to know that one bus going to Khanna was stopped at “Payal” -a place in between Ludhiana and Khanna, and twelve Hindus especially were told to get down. After they came to the ground-these terrorists fired at them and killed all the twelve at point-blank distance. So, uncertainty had become the order of the day in those days. During that time, I have at least gotten down from the bus three times while on my way to interior workings. I remember one day, I got on the bus from the backside and saw one young Sardar-Ji with a heavy bag in his hand boarding the same bus from the front. After seeing him and his actions, I realized that the same man was looking around with suspicious looks. I started thinking that the same man might be a terrorist and immediately, even after taking the bus ticket, I left the bus there and then. Whenever I used to talk about this episode-people would laugh at me, but the fact is that there was no other intelligent step or alternative but to leave the bus. Such happenings had changed the thinking of the people and safety and security those days were not at all there. Anyway, this uncertainty phase also passed off with time, and the Khalistan movement got crushed in between after the Blue Star Operation.
5. Professional maturity has its own hierarchy:
I feel the maturity in my professional hierarchy also came with the stages of attaining the developmental stage after the initiation. Which further got refined into my attaining further strength on that front. Based on this refinement, I could act on my own individually, and this taking own steps on my own led me to optimize attaining the maturity level. All these stages came hierarchically.
6. Connect the aberration & prove the professional efficiency:
The other major transformational signal came to say after quite a few years of my lonely stay there. It was the realization of my attaining professional efficiency to some extent. Initially, it was in an infancy stage-where I was simply applying myself to the established rules of the game, and slowly after saying around three to four years, I started experiencing a confident level brewing into my psyche for handling my professional aspects more easily and productively. One thing I realized here-which was a great lesson to myself-it was that had there been no rigorous hard work going into my daily professional duties-may be the confidence levels of which I am talking, might not have come to me by that time. So, the inference is that till a man doesn’t put in hard labor and repeatedly apply it-he cannot get this important transformational phase. Why I call it that is because one gets not only confidence but even becomes fearless since he realizes his potential as a professional and further aims for perfection attainment.
7. One often finds his destiny, which is unknown to him:
Yet another important transformational signal came when I had already spent six years there and, by that time, realized that the journey was not that smooth. There were many hurdles in between which, even posed questions about whether to continue in the profession. Uncertainty, which was always an integral constituent-started posing various questions to me.
I realized I should do something more than what I was doing and, under the positive influence of my friend, I was admitted to the evening college of management. I started my studies again after a gap of almost six years. I finally finished the postgraduate course in marketing and sales management and continued working successfully. At the end of the session, I was declared the topper and received the gold medal for my “Sales and Marketing Management” course because of my focus on management studies. This transformational phase is of the highest caliber in my opinion. After this, my thinking changed drastically, and the word “uncertainty” also took a back seat in my psyche.
8. The journey of high honor lies not in smooth ways.
The above famous lines of Philip Sidney are really ‘life touching’. I too am fully influenced by the meaning of these lines since they fall practically on track with my way of ‘life-journey too. I had many difficulties too but carried on smoothly with one realization that I had to do my duty to come what may. With time, I realized I was more confident and had a high level of conviction in whatever work I used to do.
9. The price of “greatness”//”freedom” is responsibility.
After this, the major transformational aspect of my stay in Ludhiana came when my marriage took place in October 1989. I was in Ludhiana, and my wife was serving in Jammu. Now, this was the phase where I was living a forced bachelor’s life in Ludhiana and waiting for the transfer for which I had applied. During this time, the bigger transformation extended the responsibility levels being added to the shoulders, and being away from my family had increased my apprehensive behavior. My frequency of visiting my hometown also increased during this phase, and my efforts to get transferred also increased. Luckily, the next year after the marriage, I got transferred to Delhi in October 1990. So, exactly one year later, this anxious phase vanished.
10. Until you take responsibility, someone else runs your life.
Being responsible for your own life means knowing that you are in full control of your destiny through your own decisions. This means having a clear idea of what you want in life, a plan for how to achieve it, and consciously making decisions that bring you closer to fulfilling your wishes. If one does not care for himself, then naturally the other person will try to dominate and influence you. Hence, be yourself in all matters.
Many such transformational phases have occurred later in my three additional decades, but in this special article, I will limit my experience to Ludhiana’s nine-year tenure. You fully agree that everyone passes through such transformational phases, but the fact is that everyone would not like to explain these personal things and discuss them in the open. My feeling here is altogether different—we must discuss these openly, and that would surely add to your behavioral explanation and strengthen your conviction about what you have attained during these phases of transformation.
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