Secret travel guides

Pic credits: Wave accounting

The most interesting part of our lives which involves continuous learning is “Travel”. Travelling might be moving within the city, country or even across the world. When we go on trips or expeditions, we get to experience an overall package of emotions which carves a deep relentless memory that we carry throughout our lives. However, no tour whether long or short can be satisfactorily completed without the assistance and guidance of a “Travel guide”. 

While I was on a tour to explore one of my favorite historic destinations of Karnataka, which was also the capital of the “Vijayanagar” empire, that is none other than the spectacular “ Hampi”, I realised that without my tour guide, I would have definitely witnessed the obvious places but at the same time would have certainly missed noticing and recognising some of the unique and worthwhile spots which added so much more value to my exploration that would have otherwise led to an incomplete and disconnected journey. 

It is here that I realised, the ultimate journey which we all have to compulsorily pull it off with utmost serenity is “LIFE”. Entire journey of life involves surpassing various ambiguous circumstances. And God cannot tangibly be present all the time to help us handle them legitimately. Here comes the time to recognise “the travel guides of our life tour” and carefully hold on to the hints they provide, as they boost up the clarity in our minds by “Unclipping the positive thoughts and regenerating hope”. 

I was fortunate enough to meet two of such travel guides during my early 20’s. It was a hard and crucial stage of my life as I was a raw college pass out with an unconditioned mind and submissive nature when pushed into the competitive employment world, having absolutely no idea of survival techniques. It is at this stage I met Mr P as I wish to address him, who befriended me without any inhibitions and selflessly guided me with respect to my job performance, dealing with team mates and manager, voicing out opinions, confidently exercising official rights etc. It is he who taught me “In a professional environment, unless we voice out our opinions and talk for ourselves, we can never do justice to our work and efforts; and it is only here silence can cause unrest both within and outside”. If not for this lesson, during my short service in corporate; I would have neither imbibed professionalism within me nor ethically made a special mark for myself. 

Now during the same phase, one such person who brought a new twist in my character was Mr J. Earlier I was a person who would put down and devalue myself thinking that I was always lesser than everyone else and doesn’t deserve to be to be paid any attention, be it my work, actions or words. I never knew how to receive compliments as I had conditioned my mind in such a way that, I possessed nothing which deserves an appreciation. This was when Mr J intervened and helped me realise a strong point, where he said “When you reject yourself, you lose the right to expect someone else to accept you”. And this made me realise the mistake I was committing by not valuing my life, self, personal experiences and learning and thus putting in vain the efforts of my parents in bringing me up with all that sincere love and passion with the only intention to see me live well. After that day I never looked back as I knew the magic of being self-confident and the value it can add to your character and performance on the whole. 

During my mid 20’s, I met another 2 travel guides and by now I was working in a bank which involved constant public interaction with public responsibility. And being a fresher in this sector, I was always jittery and scared about answering the public queries, cash dealings, heavy amount transfers etc. My only aim was to perform my duties with extreme caution with the only intention to avoid mistakes. This fear was not allowing me to do justice to my job. And one fine day, Mr N who was one of my seniors told me, “Over-thinking, Over-caution and fear can break anyone’s career in seconds, also fear to commit mistakes can lead to more perilous mistakes and nil learning, therefore just knowing our limits and simply giving our best at the moment can create miracles”, and I immediately realised and adapted the same mind-set to both my personal and professional lives and trust me I could effortlessly give my best without being stressful, which automatically gave great job satisfaction and better way of encountering unwelcoming situations. 

While working in the same bank, I learnt another important lesson by one of my officers, Mr B. I was a good performer, but would always struggle to finish my work in time because of which I had to work extra hours. When Mr B noticed this, one day with lot of care and compassion, he sat next to me and said simple yet powerful words “practicing discipline and being organised can save a lot of energy and time, which eventually leads to working smart and eliminating unnecessary hard work”. This sounded really basic, but when I made discipline my religion, it bought a new turn to my career, as it drastically improved my performance quality. 

Presently I am in my late 20’s, with a lot of questions and confusions about the purpose of my life. While I was still in the quest of my life’s purpose, I happened to meet a doctor who seemed to radiate so much positivity, happiness and hope with his aura. During our consultation, we somehow happened to indulge in a philosophical conversation where I told him I was unable to lead a satisfied life as I didn’t know my purpose. To this he said “The purpose of life is as simple as to simply live. It is we who make it complicated and fix ourselves in a maze of unnecessary desires and irrelevant relations. Follow the flow and go by it with discretion and each ones purpose is thus fulfilled”. This was a huge eye opener and at this moment I felt extremely light from within at the same time could feel the possibility of me reaching the path of eternal happiness by following his words. 

These 5 secret guides of my journey called LIFE until today, have given a lot of beautiful turns to my character without whom I wouldn’t have allowed myself to look at the unique sides of life which actually is enhancing and enriching the quality of life I am leading today. 

A Simple thought to live well 

In a beautiful tour called life, to enjoy the peculiarity of every destination, we must have an open mind and an inclusive heart to learn from everyone as we never know in which moment we meet our secret messengers from God who are our secret travel guides of life. Each one of us meet them during our journey and the only thing we need to do is keenly identify them and catch what they are trying to tell us. Assimilating their priceless words and decoding the hidden lessons of them can bring us back to the right path whenever we tend to feel lost and go off track in life. 

If you are feeling confused and lost in this huge world filled with ambiguity, recollect all those words from your secret travel guides and I promise you shall be back on track with double the desire to live well. 

Do you all agree with this?