If you find yourself stuck in a job you hate, and if wealth and fame look like distant dreams, you should hear the fascinating story of a woman called Gail Kelly.
Gail is a South African who rose to become the CEO of one of Australia’s largest banks, Westpac. She is one of the wealthiest—and most respected—people in Australia today. But it wasn’t always like this.
Born in 1956, Gail had an ordinary upbringing and education, culminating in a degree in arts. At twenty-one, she got married to her college sweetheart, and when his work took him away to Zimbabwe, she moved too. They returned a year later and Gail took up a job as a teacher in a government school.
All she remembers from those days is the bunch of difficult students she had to manage. She vividly recalls getting angry with a student who had left his jersey inside a sports room she had just locked up. ‘I felt ashamed of myself for screaming at the little kid. I was allowing my unhappiness to affect who I was!’ she recalls.
The next day, as she sat in the school bus, she wished the school didn’t exist. She hated the thought of going back to the school. She decided she must do something about it. And she did.
She got off the bus.
That was the turning point in her life. She applied for and got a job as a teller in a bank. She did well and soon got promoted to a role in human resources. Some years later, at age thirty, pregnant with her first child, she enrolled for an MBA degree. After completing that, she went back to work for the same bank, and her career continued to zoom. She was soon pregnant again and was surprised to discover that she was carrying triplets. Five months after the birth of her troika, she was back at work. Back to doing what she enjoyed.
To provide for a better future for their children, Gail and her husband decided to migrate to Australia. Gail was forty-one. She went to work for a bank there. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Gail attributes her success to a lot of things: passion, hard work, the MBA degree, a supportive husband and fabulous teams. But most of all, she knows that none of this would have been possible if she had not decided to quit her teaching job and ‘get off the bus’ that day. Gail’s story could be yours too. Even a schoolteacher can become the CEO of the country’s largest bank. Just do what you enjoy, work hard and believe in yourself. Don’t allow excuses (no MBA degree, need to bring up kids, moving locations) to interfere with your progress.
So what’s Gail’s message for her employees and for all of us? It’s simple. If you are not enjoying the ride, get off the bus. There might be more fulfilling careers waiting for you.
Too many of us spend all our lives in jobs we hate. We hate every minute of it, we complain, we show our bitterness, it affects our performance and yet we don’t act to change things. We lack the courage to call it quits. We hesitate to get off the bus.
There is also a flip side to this—there are many amongst us who board the wrong bus. But once inside, we start enjoying the comfortable pushback seats, the air-conditioning, the personal entertainment system and the wonderful companion in the next seat. We push away the recurring thought that we are on the wrong bus, headed to a place we do not want to go to, saying, ‘Where would I find such comfortable seats? And such wonderful co-passengers?’ We wonder, ‘If I left this comfortable air-conditioned bus and moved to a rickety non-air-conditioned one, what would people say?’ And with these thoughts we stay put on the wrong bus, going farther and farther away from our destination.
Don’t let that happen to you. It is better to be on a rickety bus that’s headed to the right place than to ride comfortably on the wrong bus!
If you need further inspiration, maybe you should hear about Supam Maheshwari.
Supam was a bright young lad who graduated from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. And promptly landed what many would consider a dream job: a cushy, well-paid start with a high-profile MNC, PepsiCo.
A few months into the job, and the glitz began to wear off. As Supam sat on the Pepsi truck in Mumbai selling colas to stores on the street, he knew this wasn’t quite what he wanted to do in life. The lure of working with a passionate team and fighting the cola wars was strong but Supam’s dreams were pointing in a different direction. He got off the Pepsi truck.
Supam embarked on a new journey as an entrepreneur. The big fat salary was suddenly gone. When curious relatives and well-wishers asked what he did for a living, his family could no longer proudly proclaim he worked for PepsiCo. But Supam discovered joy in slogging it out as he and a bunch of friends set up Brainvisa. It became a well-respected e-learning service provider. Supam built up the business and later sold it. He then started his second enterprise, FirstCry.com, which he hopes to build into Asia’s largest e-commerce site for baby products. Seeing Supam smile contentedly, snuggled between diapers and toys in his 50,000-square ft godown, it’s hard to imagine what might have been, had Supam not got off the Pepsi truck!
Life is too short to be wasted doing things you don’t enjoy. Doing what you enjoy offers you your best chance of success. It also gives you the strength to overcome all odds.
So if you are not enjoying what you are doing, do a Gail Kelly and Supam Maheshwari. Take the first step.
Get off the bus!
If you are not enjoying the ride, get off the bus. Life is too short to be wasted doing things you don’t enjoy. Doing what you enjoy offers you your best chance of success. It also gives you the strength to overcome all odds.