Align Your Strength with Your Purpose

About six months back, I had a chance to interact with an Army officer, a very proficient officer throughout his career but was not able to reorient his purpose since he was retiring now. He did not know how to shape up his thought process for his post retired life in which he can contribute for society. He wanted my suggestion for that.

He had the option of settling down either in Chandigarh or Gurgaon or Sonipat. He wanted to align this aspect with his post retirement vocation.

We discussed so many options, permutations and combinations but somehow, we could not find the right match where he could contribute in a positive way.

 

“Tell me which tenure of yours have been most satisfying for you?”

“Undoubtedly, my NCC tenure in Guwahati was the most satisfying for me ...”

“So many people do not wish to opt for NCC tenure.”

“True ...I had so many problems including language barrier in Guwahati, students were Assamese and they had trust problem as well but somehow I could establish the trust with them, so after six months it was a really wonderful and satisfying period, in fact I miss that tenure even now.”

“So, anything special about that ...”

“I guided six students for SSB and out of that four cleared the SSB and they are services officers now …three in Army and one in Airforce but I am not sure if they cleared because of my guidance only because they were doing organised coaching also with coaching centres.”

“That is not really a problem. You are in touch with them, just give them the call and find out.”

After a week we again sat down with the feedback which he collected. Since it was almost 7-8 years old feedback even then I found it quite authentic. Except one officer, all officers told him that they are Army officer today because of his guidance only.

I advised him to open a SSB coaching centre ...since he had the infrastructure near Gurgaon, it was not an issue to organise the things though a bit out of the city. SSB requires lot of physical training also so it was ideal place.

Yesterday, I got a call from him. His first student has cleared SSB and four more are going for SSB next month. He is getting lot of positive feedback and it looks like that he is on the roll now.

“Are you loving it …that is most important.”

“I am loving it but my wife is not loving it. She says that we have enough money for retirement life, kids are settled so why to get into the panga at this stage of life … I never anticipated it actually.”

“Even the best plan fails …you are not failing ...in any case. Just involve her in day-to-day administration activity of your coaching centre and it will be fine. Give her the purpose”

“I can do that but then it will invite other problems.”

“What is that?”

“She will start dictating me ...how to run the coaching centre?”

“Well, you will have to bear that out ...I am sure you will ...because you have got the experience of doing that in your entire life ...use your previous experience”

We gave a hearty laugh ...

@lifeisgood @allthingsbrightandbeutiful