My journey of self-discovery in 2020

These books (in the picture above) were my companions during 2020 and they were exactly what I needed during this year. Why? Because for me, this year was more about self-discovery. The realizations were amazing sometimes shocking! As some of you who are reading this and know me might remember, I left my job in end of 2018. I left without a job in-hand or having a side hustle. I just wanted a break after 21 years of continuous work plus personal challenges. It was a well thought out decision and I had a financial plan to support us during that time. I was quite confident that I will be OK after that; either I will find a good (satisfying & rewarding) job or become my own boss – an Entrepreneur.

I had a great break of 6 months and when I was thinking of the next steps Easter bombing happened. I couldn’t find the opportunities I anticipated and that sort of ‘emotionally paralyzed’ me. Anyway I don’t stay ‘down’ for long normally, so gathered my courage again and started providing consulting services as a freelancer. During this time I got trained and qualified as a Transformative Coach. This was one of my long term dreams coming true.

Then been ready to make more progress, towards end of 2019 I set up my own Company providing Talent & Business consulting which were my forte adding newly acquired skills in Coaching. I got my father who is a Senior Consultant in Tax & Investment on-board as well. With all eagerness I was looking forward to the journey of being an Entrepreneur and out of the blue (or China?) came COVID-19!!! In Sinhalese we have a saying “Pudapu gaman kapi yaka" , [ if I try to translate its ‘the moment you make an offering the devil eats it’- not sure it gives the same meaning please correct me if I am wrong] and I felt exactly the same.

I know the whole world is going through various challenges and some Entrepreneurs were able to thrive even amidst all this. I do cheer them sincerely. It could be different businesses or even if it’s the same business, background story could be totally different. Success is a result of many elements as we know.

In my case I was not ready for this setback. I think working in corporate world and stepping into an Entrepreneurship and then to have this kind of setback is very challenging. I felt paralyzed, sometimes not knowing what to do. I am a single mother as well and knowing my personal responsibilities towards my child I felt helpless sometimes.

I reached out to my LinkedIn network for opportunities. Most of them were kind enough to respond saying there are no opportunities for my profile as they are not hiring senior profiles for the moment. Some asked for my CV. Some of course didn’t bother to reply even (which was sad). There were friends and past colleagues who helped in numerous ways with references, projects, suggestions etc. which meant /means a lot to me. But something was still stopping me from moving forward as much as I want.

As a book lover I picked upon my reading, attended training on speed reading so I could read faster. Also around that time a friend of mine invited me to join a meditation program from Dr. Deepak Chopra called ‘21 days of Abundance,’ which was an amazing experience. It made me reflect in many areas of my life and my personal reflections and realizations were amazing. I continued this inner work beyond this 21 days. I realized a lot about my mindset at the time.

After a successful corporate career over 2 decades there was lot of ‘conditioning’ in my mind. I haven’t faced much failure in my professional life so my mind couldn’t handle the setbacks one after the other. I have had many challenges in my personal life and I have faced them courageously. So I couldn’t understand what the problem in this context is. I kept on doing my ‘inner work’, I wrote pages and pages of how I am feeling, meditated on it and I realized many beautiful & and not so beautiful things. Surprisingly I realized I had some ego related to my past success which was getting on my way of growth :). I ‘cut the code’ to my past, got rid of my expectations and came to a point ‘zero’ in my life. It was so good to shed all these layers of conditioning and be vulnerable. I am not done yet, a lot more work to do but I am happy that I was able to take away my focus from ‘circle of concern’ to ‘circle of influence’ in which the biggest element was my mindset.

The books I read (which is in the picture above) helped me a lot in this process. I recommend all these books. They are gems and I have high praise for them. The biggest eye opener was ‘Mindset by Dr. Carol S. Dweck’. It’s beautifully written with real examples explaining fixed and growth mindset in different areas of life and how to spot the fixed mindset and convert to growth mindset. I always believed I had growth mindset for obvious reasons and this book made me realize that I had real growth mindset in certain areas and I had a fixed mindset on some areas. As Dr. Carol explains we all have both mindsets and key is to identify and convert fixed mindset to growth mindset. The book is so great as I could easily relate to the stories and identify people with those examples like saying ‘oh that’s X’, ‘that’s Y for sure’, that’s Z’s mindset’ etc. but most importantly ‘that’s me, me, me’. :)

Jim Kwik’s book Limitless is also just what I needed this year (haven’t finished yet). He made me realize my LIE (Limited Ideas Entertained) and he teaches us how to learn anything and most importantly the integration of Mindset, Motivation and Methods. Please follow his amazing work as a ‘Brain Coach’.#kwiklearning #jimkwik.

All in all it was indeed a challenging year with some dark moments and many many blessings. I had some projects to work on, we were safe and comfortable throughout, my son was able to sit for Cambridge OL, gathered much knowledge and most importantly got to know ‘me’ better. :)

Thank you for reading this long article! Hope I was able to inspire some of you. I am looking forward to make progress in personal and professional life with better experiences in 2021. Hopefully I will have a better story to tell in the end of 2021 :)

 I thank everyone who helped me and showed support in numerous ways!

I wish all of you a Healthy, Peaceful, Happy & Prosperous New Year 2021!!