Have I arrived, he asked.

Anamika Joshi

10 years ago

I have been asked several questions during all these years related to my start-up – how it’s like to run a team, handle clients, be in a start-up mode always, suffer the frequent set-backs or to have your own set-up, etc.

It’s always easy to answer such questions. Mostly because, you have a first-hand experience and all that you need to do is put it in words. But yesterday, while chatting with one of my clients, I was asked: “Anamika, after 5 years of your startup journey, do you think you have arrived?”

The question left be baffled. First, because I wasn’t expecting it and secondly because I was clueless about what could be the possible answer to such a question. To me, since I had understood the word ‘Arrived’, I have used it in many of my copy assignments for various clients, describing a certain kind of people. To me, it means someone who owns everything he has wished for (to a certain level) in terms of materialistic things, has led a seen and done it all kind of lifestyle, achieved success, fame, respect and a status in the society. For me, I had none.

So I did a quick calculation in my head of the definition I knew and realized I haven’t.

So as an answer to his question, I said I haven’t but deep inside me, the way I know me and perceive myself, I realized I had. I had started a venture I was least aware of and went ahead with it for 5 long years. I learned what no institute, no degree would ever have taught me, I won the confidence of my family in what I had begun, and to top it all, I was ready to do it again, with my new venture in line.

I have seen people talking to me at a different level, perceiving my knowledge way beyond I possess, respecting me for things I never knew were worth it and beyond everything accepting me with little success I had achieved and ignoring my failures with all due respect. I have always tried to justify all of it by working on myself. This journey of 5 years have made me reach a point from where I see myself as a better person with a confident and ready-to-do-it-again and again attitude without any self-doubt.

So yes, I have arrived a point from where I can work towards finally arriving a place in my life, from where I can nod YES.

Keep Striving. Keep Arriving.

Loads of wishes to everyone! And Yes, A very Happy Lohri!

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