Romancing Your Career

By Shabnam Asthana

Romancing Your Career is a must read for every professional who wants to make a success of his or her career. Its universal appeal lies in the fact that it introduces you to important facets of the corporate world, with easily identifiable characters who you will laugh with, cry with, pity, despise, and even get inspired by. These are inhabitants of your nine-to-five world and an integral part of your daily interaction at the workplace.

Your profession is a storehouse of immense learning, provided you are in a receptive mode. It provides you with ample opportunities and springboards to catapult to success. It also comes with its fair share of volatile situations, and it is for you to provide the safety switch of maturity and experience to prevent any short circuits.

What I write in the subsequent chapters is heartfelt and firsthand. I attempt to take you through some painful, some joyous, and some ooh la la moments of my career, which will leave an indelible mark on you, to either create or darken your own footprints of success.

I welcome you aboard your journey of wonder, enrichment, intrigue, and romance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Mar 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781482888843

Shabnam Asthana

Shabnam Asthana, holds a Masters Degree in English is a Post Graduate in Public Relations &Advertising, an MBA in Marketing Management and has several International accreditations to her credit. She is a writer with published articles in reputed newspapers and magazines, and a Communications Professional. Shabnam has a rich work experience of 25 years in leading corporates including Multinationals, both in India and overseas. She embraced entrepreneurship in 2005 and founded Empowered Solutions, which she currently Heads as its Managing Director. She is also an invited speaker at various National and International forums and an acclaimed International soft skills coach. She is extremely passionate about and has a great zeal for reading and writing. Shabnam is passionate, vibrant and enthusiastic about her career and very excited to give you an insight into her career and share it with all working professionals. Her experiences are not limited to her profession alone but embody universal and identifiable experiences for one and all. She describes herself as a workaholic with a difference, somebody who woos her work and enjoys being wooed by it. Her relationship status reads – eternal love and romance! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabnam_Asthana www.empoweredsolutions.in email id : [e-mail]

Book preview

Prologue

T oday I make another addition to my overfull bag of emotions – the emotion of fulfillment! Today I feel fulfilled! Today I also realize that a single emotion can host a set of sub emotions, because this is a different kind of fulfillment. In my book Romancing Your Career, I have dropped the carefully cultivated polished exterior of the perfect professional and given you a glimpse of the proverbial behind the scenes activities. I feel happy, I feel vindicated, and I feel exuberant.

Thinking of a topic for my first book was for once something easily said and easily done, I guess this ease stems from the fact that it is only people and things close to you that come readily to your mind. The dilemma however, lay in its classification, was my career to be categorized in the former or the latter? Was it animate or was it inanimate?

My career has been as inseparable as life itself. It has permeated my very being with wonderful emotions and enriched me immensely. What ensues in the following chapters is not a natural, linear, mundane progression of my career, but in fact a medley of memories, people and incidents that come randomly in my mind’s eye as they would for all people who are in love, for love defies chronological orders, dates and sequences.

It redefines importance and relevance when seemingly unimportant things suddenly assume a life determining significance and the routinely important ones are reshuffled in the priority list. What emerges after you pen your thoughts is a wonderful ballad of memories and experiences which were always latent but have now been brought to the fore to be relived and relished.

I recall, my disappointment when as a child I was not permitted by my parents to attend a school picnic, my adolescent years when despite my best dance steps and moves in a local dance competition I walked home with a consolation prize, or the shock of that incident when I donned crisp starched new clothes with a new bob cut hair style and walked in to a party with my father only to be complimented on what a good looking but a tad skinny son I was. I recall my disappointment after listening to all the rags to riches stories at why I was economically and financially well placed, regretting the absence of a ground zero platform to take off from. Why was I born in a comfort zone if I had to make it big one day? I chided myself mentally. My assumption being driven by the common belief that only those born and brought up in the lower echelons of society would work their way up, depravity being highly conducive to breeding success, while those who were reasonably comfortable in life moved on from one comfort to another with ease. They did not need to make great career discoveries and be lauded for those.

The above incidents though, left me with a feeling of incompleteness as if there was something I had to achieve and prove not to the world but to myself. I felt engulfed with a desire to aim for something beyond my line of vision; something which would make me enthralled at its appearance and make me go weak in the knees. I discovered all these and much more in my love – My Career.

I could either blame it on the stars or applaud them for it but I admit with vehemence that star power was at its potent best on me. Leo Traits - Warm, action-oriented and driven by the desire to be loved and admired, Leos have an air of royalty about them. They love to be in the limelight, which is why many of them make a career in the performing arts.

I feel happy, when I am noticed as soon as I enter a room, I feel happier when I continue being noticed even after the initial interactions and am the happiest when I am remembered well past the end of the meeting.

I have evolved from the hesitant yet ambitious lady who entered the world of PR to the mature, confident woman very comfortable in her skin and self worth, a woman who has numerous awards and accolades behind her and has to probably opt for a one size bigger cap to accommodate the growing no of feathers on it. Regretfully though, I am still embroiled in a non conclusive battle of trying to make a few people understand that it is the cap and not the head which has grown in size. I continue in my futile efforts to make them realize that a lot of hard work and toil has gone into making me what I am today, and if I recount an achievement by picking up the phone, or texting it in a social media group, it is only because I am excited to see my efforts fructify, I am excited at being singled out from the clutter for a recognition or an award, I am happy to be considered as a first ever Indian speaker at an International conference and all these should not be bracketed together under the common label of showing off. It stems from the joy of sharing and it is the happiness of understanding and encouragement which I in turn seek from them. I humbly acknowledge the existence of people moving around with larger caps and realize that I still have a long way to go.

Some have derived great pleasure in probing into the private compartments of my life which I have not yet uncovered (purely because as the word implies they are private and have no relevance to the public,) adding their own conjectures with great conviction and imaginary closeness to me, have termed my positive work related travel, as escapades prefixing it with unpalatable letters of their choice. I have been alienated by a few close people who believed that if 3, 4 or 5 of them stood together, I as the 4th 5th or 6th, would most definitely feel small and unwanted. I have a special thank you for such people because they have made me realize that the biggest strength in the world and more so in the corporate world is not dependence but self dependence.

My profession has awarded me a unique PHD degree. The uniqueness and difference being that unlike a paper qualification it’s a mental degree awarded by yourself, where P stands for passion, H for honesty and D for dedication towards your profession.

The fact that I enjoy dressing up, wearing makeup and keeping abreast of the latest trends in fashion is because I enjoy my feminity and this particular aspect that it embodies. The fact that I sometimes shell out money from my pocket for luxury hotels and first class travel in case the sponsored company trips do not include those, is not to propagate a holier than thou attitude (since we still fall in the domain of the working class, entrepreneur or otherwise, and these are deemed avoidable frills and luxuries) or If I can sport a solitaire, or make the best brands a part of my wardrobe and shoe rack, it is because I have a soft spot for luxury and all that is entails but most importantly I feel immensely gratified and happy that I am able to afford it on my own. I am guilty of being proud yes, but this pride has in its bank account my limitless self worth and love almost to the point of insanity for my profession.

Yes, I do get along better with men and have more men friends than women, but it’s because I choose friendship over gender and in today’s modern world if one is gender rooted in all that they do, the roots are sure to weaken and make everything attached to it topple over.

Your profession is a storehouse of various volatile situations and accompanying emotions, you have to provide the safety switch of maturity and experience to prevent any short circuits. What I write henceforth in the subsequent chapters is heartfelt and first hand. I do not attempt to sermonize or criticize, for how can I be a party to something I myself am averse to? I attempt to take you through some painful, some joyous, some ooh la la moments of my career and would be delighted when you recognize a few characters, empathise with them or get inspired by them during the course of your reading journey!

I am greatly indebted to my father Onkar Nath Panchalar for the inspiration that he has provided and continues to provide from his golden abode above, to Deepak, Snigdha & Deb, who love me for what I am, my darling Labrador Scooby for introducing me to that part of my soul which lay undiscovered and without whose love and affection my very existence today would be incomplete and unimaginable and lastly my soul mate, the love of my life my Career for teaching me to be ME.

As you dear readers turn the pages to begin your reading journey, I turn mine, towards a new tomorrow, pursuing yet another day in my profession with new longing, new expectation and a surfeit of love……..

CHAPTER 1

PROSPECTIVE SUITORS AND THE PERFECT MATCH!

W hile we regale in the word individuality and strive hard to establish one, our oxymoronic existence gives us inevitable reality shakes at various junctures in our life, leaving us vulnerable and reactive. So, by that logic, individuals while being independent entities are also universal, in terms of the choices that confront them. Then is the choice itself universal or the feelings that are associated with it?

Without delving more into the childhood ones, I do a fast forward and halt at a career choice. I am a staunch disbeliever in the word paucity or deprivation either singularly or in any of its manifestations and firmly believe that life has always been liberal in doling out choices to one and all. In fact, making an intelligent career choice from a plethora of abundant possibilities instead of a dearth of them can indeed be a daunting task. I was no exception then, when it was my turn to embrace one.

A career in my opinion is akin to a suitor; it is something that you have to commit yourself to and therefore has to be given careful consideration. While lending an ear to the oh so many advisors, it is ultimately your head and heart that clinch it. With a great choice of suitors unleashed, I embarked on the expected task of elimination and a possible selection. Taking recourse to my fertile imagination, I did exactly what I had been doing in the past in the wake of multiple choices that I was posed with - the time tested mental cinematography. With this in place, I was etching out various roles for myself - as a doctor walking through hospital corridors, holding on to syringes and scalpels with comfort and ease, or as an airhostess precariously balancing eats and beverages on a tray at 35,000 feet, a teacher inking and writing out my destiny as well as those of my attentive pupils in exercise books and blackboards, then with a dash of glamour it was strong lights, layers of makeup, lights, camera, action, and I was an actor and performer with loads of public adulation. However, all these roles had the common thread of emotions running through them - trepidation to excitement, nervousness to confidence, Yes, I have lived it all in my personal mental span, living and re living them till I zeroed down on one, which fell into the popular choice category. There was something intriguing about changing course from the taught to the teacher wasn’t it?

So finally, the garland of hopes was placed around this suitor who held my hand and took me to the classroom and his world of scholarly promises. The scene of action during this period progressed from junior school teaching to High school teaching to teaching in a prestigious Defence Academy. Each experience unique in its own way. It is amazing how you don the cap of the role you play, with such ease and simplicity. Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, nursery rhymes, tongue twisters were indeed the all consuming reality centric world for me when conversing with the junior souls of my teaching universe while poems of Keats, Byron and Shakespearean plays dominated my universe as a High school teacher. The strong smart spirit of the military academy campus permeated my being and I graduated from a common man or should I say woman, along with the cadets to a world of bravery, camaraderie and the all consuming passion and love for my motherland. I lived and essayed all the roles with a great sense of belonging and enjoyed and reveled in all that it had to offer. Teaching is indeed an enriching experience and it would be apt to say that it’s not about what one imparts but what one gains