Is it worth it?

“Is it worth it”?

A question you always try to find an answer for. This is the question you might have encountered in many small to large decisions you take whether in terms of playing small pranks on your friends, to career choices you made, to effort you put in to follow your passion, to taking risks for sheer joy, to starting your own venture, to investing etc.

At every little juncture you had?that choice to follow through or a choice to really push yourself and see its worth. Of Course there are a lot of dilemmas and internal battles you ought to fight to know the worth of the choices you made or make.

As an entrepreneur, the failures, the downs which an entrepreneur faces in their journey makes them question a lot. It puts them into a perplexing situation with a lot of things at stake, personally and professionally.

Especially when you are a mom, you have this constant self doubt whether the time that you are putting to achieve the goals that you set for the company and for yourself whether it is really worth it. When you miss spending time with your children, when you miss some of their milestones, when you miss having lunch or dinner with them, when you miss some of their homework or learning schedules, You tend to believe that you are not doing something right. It kind of leads you into a spiral over thinking mode about goals, parenting and their prioritization.

After having 2 children, everyone around me told me to slow down, lower your focus, as you now have 2 children, your focus should be on bringing them up, raising them to be disciplined children, raising them to be better citizens as this is the first duty as a Mother you need to achieve. Rest about the business and your personal goals could be achieved later.

It was a constant struggle for me to find the answer whether it would make sense for the effort that we put today to see its benefits in the future.

Ofcourse I am not standing in my 60’s and I am making a speech of the goals I have achieved. It’s still “Work in Progress” :-)

But recently when my daughter told me “I am an entrepreneur, like you & papa ” :-), This simple statement of hers made me realise “Yes, It’s worth it!”

Infact, when she put her idea of having a garage sale of old clothes into action with her friends, she could correlate her experience of having a weekend garage sale of old clothes to what her parents were doing to build a company. This practical learning made her think about entrepreneurship. She said cutely, “ I will do hiring”, I think she realised early hiring is a big challenge by observing me :-). Earlier the better, I said in my mind as we all know the scarcity we have.

Anyway, her words “I am an entrepreneur, like you & Papa” taught me something about “Aspirations”, how they are formed? Or are changed? when you see, observe people around you doing different things.

Earlier, as a child only aspirations that were sold were limited to “What society needs” or “What societies sees” or “ What societies has” which are “Teacher”, “Policeman”, “Doctor”, “Engineer”, “CA” etc.

In none of my children’s classes I have seen teachers talking about “Entrepreneurs”, not even a small section about them. Why? Aren’t they important to our society’s progress & development? Don’t they change things as an inventor does? Children are informed/made aware about community helpers but never about entrepreneurs or changemakers in the society.

Today an 8 year old girl, my daughter, told me to be an entrepreneur and negotiated with me for her salary as an intern. This is truly a satisfactory outcome to my entrepreneurial journey, which is of course is “Work in progress” :-), more to come, But after hearing this from her, I can firmly say, “It’s totally worth it!A seed is sown, an Aspiration is born, curiosity will follow and choices will happen, actions will be taken & progress shall happen.

All we can do as a society/community/Schools to let our children have aspirations which are truly theirs and not enforced by adults.

And trust me, It’s worth it!