If you can be anything, be committed

Bus conductor->Dancer->Journalist->Author->Advertiser->Graphic designer->Creative head->Nobel Prize winner for best idea ever. That has been the progression of my professional ambitions from the age of four.

‘If you can be anything, be committed’ is something my mother always said — and I live by her example. Growing up with a single mother taught me how to pick up after myself and learn the importance of hard work at an early age.

I am constantly amazed by how much you can achieve if only you commit yourself to it. Thankfully though, I stopped committing to becoming a bus conductor a little after I was four. However, I always went headlong into whatever I wanted to pursue. I have thus far worked in media — behind big shows, in events featuring the likes of Shahrukh Khan, in advertising alongside some of the best in the industry, in radio for some uber cool brands — and have taken each opportunity as a steppingstone in my pursuit of committing myself against all odds and conventional wisdom to create something good.

For each idea, each concept, and each practice, I always ask myself — “Am I committed to it enough to wake up the next day/week/month and love it?”

But I was not always this confident. I was quite the introvert all the way to middle school up till one defining day and a single question. This question was asked by one of my classmates, who was the most confident person I knew. She asked me WHY I was always so quiet, and that is when the answer came to me — “Because what if they judge me for what I say”. “So stop talking to them”, she said.

That simple! You choose who you want to keep in your life and who you don’t. So say what you want, be who you are, chase what you want to be, and pick the people you want to keep.

I mulled over this the entire day, and from the next day onwards I became the most talkative person in my class!

I firmly believe that you can literally do ANYTHING if you commit to it. The best project you will ever get to work on is YOU.

(This blog was penned by Sneha Prasad from the marketing team at ClearTax.)