What happened in 2020 is known to all. Markets tumbled, retail stores were shut, migrants returning, and unemployment rising across income segments. 1 out of 6 had ‘open to work’ tag on their FB, LinkedIn profile, and Job offers were being rescinded.

This took me 12 years down the memory lane. It was first week of February 2008 and a batch of 100 students were celebrating the successful placement season at a well-known institute of rural management in western part of India. While another 100 in the junior batch were also quite happy with the hiring trends as it led to sizeable shift in the average salaries and number of job offers and presence of companies from almost all the sectors of the economy. ICICI group emerged a largest recruiter, hiring almost 25% of the batch across Banking and Insurance domains.

While everything went well next couple of months, one fine day the cover page of all daily newspapers published news of Lehman Brothers’ fall with the bear photo. The charts with blood red colored trend lines were constant in daily editions, with names of many foreign and domestic banks also facing the heat of the meltdown. The economics and finance wizards of the batch used to be glued to Economic Times. Some of us were in marketing and weren’t much concerned about it at that point of time. However the drying number of project offers for internship segment started giving us indications about the upcoming placement season.

Many batch mates were more worried as they had left a job or job offer prior to joining the program and now staring at the bleak job market.

However one amongst 100 of us wasn’t worried with all this. Once I found him near cafeteria and could not stop myself from asking him about this, Dada does all this market condition not bother you? You are always calm and silently finish your cup of tea and go back to your room. How do you do manage so much of stress?

What he said at that point of time has kept me moving since last 13 years. He replied, dear friend, if “tomorrow” worries you, don’t let it spoil today. No matter how much you try to avoid it or think of wrong decisions you made which led you to this, you will have to live it at some point of time in future. While passing a cup of tea he said, let’s prepare ourselves for a tomorrow that may be different than what we may anticipate, it may need different skills than what many around us may suggest. The only constant would be you and this sip of future (tea) hence keep preparing yourself for the unknown and embrace the change.

All this sounded merely Gyan at that point of time, but every year in my professional career I found myself in similar situation where one or other person closer to me sounded as if it’s end of the World. One may feel down, depressed, frustrated and the reasons may be many i.e. not able to appear for board exam, not able to give their best in entrance, not getting a job or job of choice, not able to meet targets, not liking our job or boss, being jobless or someone having unreasonable expectations from you etc.

Do what Dada said back in 2008, have a sip of future and keep preparing yourself for tomorrow so that when you take off, nothing stops you. Every failure or setback would teach you how not to fail in next attempt.

As someone said, life is not sprint, its marathon, so prepare for marathon.

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