The Power of Imagination

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Updated 4 years ago

Life's like that

It was 2001. I was still in Bangalore, India. It was four years into our marriage, our beautiful daughter was 2.5 years of age. We had moved to a new house in 2000, just over a year through the house mortgage and a car.

Life started showing its ways to me. In the next five months I was down with typhoid + gastroenteritis - fortunately escaped the surgery where the small intestine was to be shortened a bit. My Mom passed away in the next 4 months. 2001 ended with my job redundancy - an effect of global dot-com bomb - 9/11 in the US which had an effect world-wide.

For the next 8 months I was selling Life Insurance.

This was the time when I learnt selling and a bit of network marketing.

Through one of my friends, I moved alone to Thailand in mid-2002 as an IT Trainer, I worked there for the next 2.5 years. Then my family joined me there. By next 6 months, the company closed down operations and at the same I changed jobs to keep myself afloat.

Apparently, I joined a jewellery business as their IT consultant to help them setup their IT systems. It is interesting how things look different outside and what actually goes on the inside. I was shown dreams. I did not have any paper agreement for joining, except the government work permit, which was the only proof that I am their consultant. The oral agreement was that I need to work for them and I would be paid and X amount + 5% of commission on every jewellery that is sold through their website.

This is when I developed few skills on web development.

Truth be told, the company had their own policies of paying people their salaries on instalment basis. Work permit fees was shared between the company and me. The reason given was that they treat me as their partner and not an employee.

At the home front, my wife was just hit by bells-palsey, a paralytic condition on her face.

I could not take any more, and I resigned the job over-night and I flew with my family back to India. In the next couple of months I moved to Australia in 2006 on a job.

After working for 6.5 years in Australia, in mid-2012, I had another job redundancy. In the next 18 months, I went through severe unemployment (late effect of GFC in Australia). I passed through those times by doing whatever jobs I could lay my hands on. Interesting jobs such as Call centre - debt collections (while I was chased by debtors to my mortgage here in Australia).

Other interesting jobs were in the logistics (courier delivery) and Security industries.

After the redundancy in 2012, another loss of imagination, it took four months of time to prepare to move out and do something.

A health setback in December 2013 with Pulmonary Tuberculosis, medication for the next eight months, taught me lessons as to how important health is. Not that I didn't know the importance, this health setback occurred due to extreme stress in the past 18+ months.

Lying on the hospital bed for 17 days and following recovery, the thought process was about how things would need to go back to normal and what I need to be doing. It would take the next 14 months to bring my finances back to stable condition.

The most interesting part is, how we handle the situation. Regardless of the setback be it job, health, finance or relationship. We first lose imagination, and we consider the world has fallen on us headon and it is the end of the world and there is no future.

Our brain tends to think backwards, seeing a deadend wall in front of us, instead of imagining and exploring new possibilities. In my view imagination equals new possibilities.

In hindsight, every setback has taught me some valuable lessons. Most of them have been boon in disguise. Although there is a world outside IT, the situations taught me the capacity to learn and adjust to the external world.

With my first job redundancy - I learnt insurance selling & marketing

With my second redundancy - I learnt courier driving, communication (call centre), wordpress and web technologies, customer service in fuel stations, etc.

It is in these times that I developed passions towards writing and copywriting as well.

To be more precise, writing and copywriting came out of a vengeance. In one of my contract work roles, my contract was not renewed and luckily I got another break at the same time. The reason given was that my writing was not good enough, etc. Funnily the reasons sighted were from my initial days of contract. If that were to be true, there was no necessity to keep me for a full year before I was let go. People who were clearly producing less quality work than me were still continuing their contracts.

Sometimes, things are not meant to be for us. Logic does not work all the time. There are better opportunities and plans lying ahead and it takes a bit of soul searching, but it is worth the search.

At every setback, what I have seen is the

Steps of Change

1. Deny the event - cannot accept that it has occurred;

I am made redundant; I can’t believe it; it is not true

2. Blame it on somebody or something.

I was not given a chance to prove. My boss does not like me. There is favouritism within the company. Why am I the scape goat?

3. Grappling not knowing how to respond

I stayed away from this. But this is a very dangerous stage; People may resort to abnormal habits such as drinking, smoking, drugs and the likes.

4. Acknowledge the situation

This is a very useful stage, the sooner we get to this step, it is all the more better and constructive, high chances of improving our situation. Moving to step 4 is the most crucial step.

5. Imagine the possibilities

This step involves a high level analysis by answering several key questions such as

Where am I at the moment? current status
Where do I want to go? future state
How much time can I spend on a daily basis?
Do a SWOT - Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threats?
What is my deadline date?
Whom do I associate or work with?
What are my current Ins and Outs - financially?
What are my resources? - People, material and money?
Put a plan of action.

6. Start taking actions

Depending on your decisions/possibilities in step 5, take action consistently, monitor progress, periodically, daily if needed.

Repeating steps 4,5 & 6 persistently lead us to live in the future instead of living the past memories.

I have been doing this consistently since 2014 and moved into a Contracting job and now I am a Senior consultant in a management consulting company. I treat this job as an investor for my future dreams.

Write down your setbacks, Can you learn something from your past?

You have a huge potential sitting inside waiting to be tapped, did you recognise that?

Go, get up take some action now towards your D R E A M S.