GTI organized an exclusive webinar on chasing one’s dream which was conducted by Ms. Ayushi Sharma. She shared her mantra through her passionate journey.
Ayushi hails from Himachal Pradesh and is a social entrepreneur by passion. Currently, she resides in Bengaluru. She started by explaining what passion means. She said passion can interchangeably be used for determination, conviction, and love. It is an emotion to be acted upon. A push you have within you to make your life more meaningful. Passion is the fuel in the fire of action. However, to find this passion, we first need to be able to discover ourselves. Find what we are passionate about, and this process is learning in itself. There are many ways to find this, you can do it by trying something new or reigniting lost passions or many more.
Ayushi found her passion at a very young age. It just took her a couple of years to rediscover it. Her hometown, back in the days wasn’t a much-commercialized town. There was a lot of manual labor that still took place and as a child, she would see aged men working at such sites and often wondered and felt pained that they were struggling at such an age. At the time she was too young to be able to do anything about it. Eventually, she grew up, finished her education, and began her corporate career. But the thought never left her mind. One day she sat down and thought about what she wanted to do in life, and that is when the fire in her reignited. She was in contact with an NGO (PAGIR) at that moment, so she contacted them asking for any vacancy in their projects and moved to Leh for a period to two months. She even quit her job to do this. It did seem like an impulsive move at that moment, but Ayushi was sure this was her true calling. While working there she learned a lot about the on-ground situation. At first, it was difficult to adapt to the weather conditions in Leh, but she eventually got used to it. After her 2 months of volunteering, she came back home to family, but the will to keep doing something for the people in the hilly region was still there. In an attempt to get guidance for starting her own NGO, she contacted the founder of PAGIR, Mohammed Iqbal. On calling him she got to know that he had recently left PAGIR, as it was successfully running, and he wanted to start a new venture too. The two immediately clicked and they registered their NGO – Himalayan Helping Hands. This NGO aims at creating employment opportunities for people in the Himalayan region and supports causes like education, sports, culture, and environment, with a special focus on the upliftment of differently-abled and neglected segment. Through her own story, Ayushi aims at inspiring people to find their drive and attach a purpose to their passion.
However, the one question we all have in the back of our mind which often stops us is that – Can hobby be a source of income? Ayushi addressed this question by saying that it is a possibility. If planned well a hobby could be converted into a source of income. Like in the case of the founder of Byju’s who started the app due to his love and passion for making teaching easier and more accessible, but not all of us want to convert our hobbies into a money-making machine. Some of us are just satisfied with the happiness it gives us no monetary benefits in return. So, depending on your goal for your hobby set out a plan for yourself.
Having to manage work, passion, and family may seem too much sometimes. Answering this concern, Ayushi said that there is no universal answer to this balance. We must learn to carve out time to do what we love, schedule our days, prioritize, learn to say no to people, and most importantly learn to manage time. There is a certain amount of grit that every person must have within them to be successful in their venture. To make your passion work one must be relentless and fight all odds to make it work. Self-motivation and time management are must-haves to drive your passion forward.
We thank Ayushi Sharma for taking time out and sharing her story with the viewers of GTI and inspiring us.
Stay tuned for more interesting and inspiring webinars.
