Ravi Speaks:When My Mentor Told Me-‘Do Not Sell Yourself-You Are Not Cheap’.

There are many games played by various characters in different situations on different platforms in one’s ongoing career course. Various characters come across and leave their marks either as the ‘heroes’ and impress you and benefit you or some, even come as the ‘villains’ and still put an impending impression on your mind with their stuff of games played upon you at a point in time in your career graph. Similarly, someone comes across as a ‘leader’ and even acts as your ‘mentor’ and you are lucky enough to learn under his guidance and even from his all-possible motivational approach towards you.

Understand Yourself.

Mentor & Mentee

I would remember for the rest of my life the day 11th May-1989-when I was attending the Cycle Meeting of Punjab in Delhi at Hotel Hyatt-Regency-South Delhi. I was in Ludhiana working as a Medical representative. The scene there was such that this great man- ‘my mentor’-seemed to be very sad and what we all observed in the meeting was that he was being ignored by the SM and the ZM of that time. Everyone was feeling strange. It looked like there was a clear-cut lobby formation among the managers. All the middle-tier management, including the SMs of the north, at least had joined the then ‘Business Head’ against this great man, and its effect was even up to the lower-ranking field staff as well. If I say there was segregation in the field force as well, that would be appropriate. This ‘Business Head’ was also the Operational Head of the company-functioning.

Various Game One Creates.

It was in this meeting that my ‘GM-Sales’ delivered a small talk mentioning a story related to “a saint and a scorpion”. He said that there was a Saint very busy in his ‘Tapasya’ at the bank of the river. There came a scorpion and stung the saint on his arm because of which the saint got disturbed in his ‘Tapasya’. Instead of crushing the scorpion, just picked it up and kept safely on the side, and saved it. After some time, the scorpion again came and stung him once again. This time, the saint repeated the same act of saving the scorpion and leaving it on one side. A man was seeing this act of the saint. He told the saint why he did not crush the scorpion since it was repeatedly stinging him and putting poison into his body. The saint replied it was his karma to save the living creatures and the scorpion’s karma was to sting them. Let it do its karma and let me do my karma of saving the creatures.

Boss-Observing Secretly.

He mentioned in it indirectly all that had happened in the managerial cadres then. He wanted to tell that just as the saint wanted to save the life of a scorpion every time it came and stung the saint-like-wise, the karma of every person was specifically poised. If the saint’s karma was to save the living creatures around him, the karma of the scorpion was to sting even the saver like the saint in the story. So unique characters had different karmas attached to the fates-which they had to perform.

Valuable Quote.

It was here in this meeting, during one of the morning tea breaks, that my mentor took me aside and told me not to sell myself since I was not that cheap-a stuff. I got surprised to listen to him like that. I asked him if I had never been harmful to anyone and I maintained my stature with full dignity and I assured him that his statement was surely wrong on those grounds. To this, he asked me certain queries regarding my working with managers at Punjab-where in those days the managerial working was boycotted by the Associations. I replied to him every bit and also told him about the secret work by the ZM in those days when he of his own had come to Ludhiana. 

The moment he received this bit of news from me regarding the managerial work done despite calling it closed for the time being-he immediately went into another group and mentioned there that despite cautioning the managers not to go to Punjab and do the work -look at the ZM-he had gone and it created problems there for the local guys to face the association people.

Valuable Quote.

By this act, I could gather that he was not kept in the loop and when I had met the ZM on his secret visit to Ludhiana-he told me that the GM sales had sent him. I went to the GM sales and told him it was not me selling myself but it was the ZM doing the same act since he told me about the senior GM sales had sent him to Ludhiana. To this, the reply to GM sales was very painful. He said that he had nurtured these people and brought them to such a respectful position and look how they were paying back by trying to sell their own senior to the people around and get their way through. I realized that this great soul was really like a saint and he did not harm anyone at any point in time. It was only the other people who showed their caliber and acted like scorpions of the story.

Valuable Quote.

My mentor immediately after that moved on to the other section in the company-where he started helping the ‘Research & Development Wing’-that way after devoting his whole life to the Sales Line-changed it towards the end to a new one-but the organization kept him till he continued his reaching even the late seventies.

Big people become big only by their good karmas, destiny, and above all their attainment of ‘Saintly stature’.

‘Be you and be true to your words, don’t sell yourself short, and don’t waste your life worrying always’.:-SAM OWEN. 

‘You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you trust the dots will somehow connect in your future. Trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.’:- STEVE-JOBS.

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