In the last one month I have traveled to thirteen cities, took 18 seminars, in the Northern, Eastern and Central India, addressing youth with dreams in their eyes, as part of “Realizing Your Dreams – Secrets of Success in CAT, Career and Life” tour. These sessions are also labeled as “90 days to CAT”, “80 days to CAT” and so on as is convenient to each of the centres to pull aspirants. Today I am in Bhopal, addressing ‘Get JOSH & Pagalpan. Conquer CAT in 50 days’. I have so far addressed in excess of seven thousand students in these seminars. Landing in the next city every morning, charge myself to charge the youngsters, enabling them to think big, by the end of the day again board the train to the next destination. It has been very exciting, at the same time enervating. Every seminar is a two-2-three hours of intense engagement, shaking the youth to get out of the slumber to set out on the path to realizing their dreams, their immediate goal of excelling in CAT. It is very demanding – physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and socially – as I need to facilitate them in those short two hours or so, to get rid of negative thoughts, look ahead optimistically, believe that they can really succeed by giving their best.

Though I feel exhausted by the end of the session, at times two such sessions in a day, I am very delighted that this endeavour is helping scores of students to believe in themselves. The Feedback I am getting at the end of the sessions, the number of mails that I have been receiving, and the demand to share the videos that I interleave during the seminars, shows that we are on the right direction. The energy that each of the participant in the seminars carries home at the end of the session is unimaginable. It is just a question of PUSHING THEM TO PUSH THEIR BOUNDARIES. More the number of such seminars I address, greater is the realization and confirmation too from the youth for such programme to be internal to any endeavours.

It took me a couple of sessions to come to the equation of how to cover the three elements of the sessions – Thinking Big, Challenging the CAT and Introducing IWSB, an institution stoking Entrepreneurial Leadership. Also the demarcations have been pretty dynamic depending on the effort it takes to push the audience to wake up from their ‘slumber’.

Thinking BIG and Being Passionate about the GOAL

Secrets of Success

As part of the session, I cover about an hour or so on – thinking big, setting out goals to achieve, being passionate about them, making them realize that it is not difficult to achieve every goal that we set, if only we really want it. I take help of videos very liberally to demonstrate the secrets of success – Passionate about the goal, the attitude one carries, the hardwork one is willing to put, and the confidence and grit with which one faces the adversities, if the goal is to be achieved at any cost. Each one of us does demonstrate such a passion many a times, when we do not have any choice. How do we make every goal and every effort to realize the goal as passionate, is the question?

Single Minded pursuit of their Goal

Every goal can be achieved if we are willing to give our sweat and blood. Every time in our life, whenever we have achieved something, on introspection, we realize that we gave everything that we had at that moment. In an auditorium, when I pose a question about how many are giving their sweat and blood, response will be abysmal one-in-hundred. What does it convey, it is not about competition. Even if there are 3-lakh students appearing, only a couple of thousands are passionate about getting into IIMs. So every guy who is passionate and working hard will get a seat there. It is therefore just a question of fighting against oneself – to be passionate, fight the urge to give up, giving sweat and blood. It is all about “You Vs Yourself,” and competition has nothing to do with the final result.

This clip demonstrates the capability of a human being..

Oscar finishes Second in the GOLDEN League with all top abled-atheletes

“Kindly create a few Placards, with your name saying CLASS of 2012, IIMA written on them and place them everywhere”. It will goad you, challenge you, push you to work hard and perform. Students are writing to me about how this very simple act is constantly challenging them to perform and they say that they are different beings today.

Work on fundamentals and Sharpen the Saw

The second part of the session is to make every aspirant aware of how they need to equip themselves with tools, clarity of concepts and techniques to use the tools and concepts to gain momentum, reduce time, approximate computations and make judicious choices. Through solving of a few questions mentally, the aspirants do realize the need to be thorough on fundamentals and also how the tools like multiplicative tables, reciprocals and percentages help them to run faster with computations mentally.

I also cover on how to be a better reader, to comprehend and respond. Reading is a great challenge for most adults in India, as we do not venture beyond the books assigned by our syllabi. Many times even here we are very narrow in our selection. We read only what we like. The secret to excel is to enjoy reading, irrespective of what is thrown at you.

Though the current CAT format does not pose demands on time, yes, by being efficient in reading and computations, one can indeed save time to deploy elsewhere. Being good in English is paramount to succeeding in CAT.

One has to work systematically – stick to schedules, do not hit bed if one does not finish the targets for the day. Focus on revising fundamentals, gaining computational speed and investing time in polishing reading skills enable one to succeed.

Basically, do not panic. Be steadfast. Cover all that you need to every day…

In the mock exams, you need to be time bound. Allocate times for sections, do not violate and boundaries. Make sure that you reach the end of the section as soon as possible solving all the problems you can, without getting stuck at any. Make sure that you know when to leave a problem and when you will hold on to. One should be exhausted in every sense, by the time when on finishes any give mock exam.

You will be sitting in one of the IIMs next year if you do these basics thoroughly.

IWSB – Stoking Entrepreneurial Leadership.

Within short span of one year, IWSB has been rated by NEN Global, as one of the top seven institutions, including a couple of IITs and IIMs, for fostering entrepreneurial leadership. With a battery of well known entrepreneurs, founders of some of the fastest growing companies, like Sanjeev Bhikchandani of naukri.com, Shantanu Prakash of Educomp, Vishwadeep Bajaj of ValueFirst and some of the well known investors like Mahesh Murthy of Pinstorm, Sanjeev aggarwal of Helion etc. supporting the endeavours of IWSB, the institution is bound to make Entrepreneurship as its hallmark.

On each of the parameters that a student evaluates the institution – placements, faculty, curriculum, infrastructure, global outlook, industry interaction, hostel facilities and life in general, IWSB is in a league comparable to the best of the institutions in the country,

The summers witnessed IWSB students getting placed in the best of the corporates, in some of the fast growing companies apart from well known corporates, with handsome stipends. The fast growing companies give them greater responsibility and freedom to achieve the intended goals.

With an array of eminent academics headed by Prof. Ishwar Dayal, with over forty years of experience in IIM ecosystem – Kolkata, Ahmedabad and as Founder Director of Lucknow, IWSB stands as one of the best new institutions in the country. The academic team is supported by a battery of outstanding professionals from the industry who take sessions as visiting faculty too.

Every Friday, an eminent personality from Industry or other walks of life, interact with students to share their life journey, their face-2-face with failures and success under the programme “MY JOURNEY.” Apart from this, this year a team of seven corporate leaders from Europe visited IWSB, as part of their tour to understand the future potential of the INDIA. Last year a group of seven leaders from Europe visited the campus.

SRIJAN, a business plan competition, attracts huge entries every year and is known for actually incubating the best plans on the campus. It is one of a kind competition in India.

The life at IWSB is very interesting with outbound learning, rural immersion project, Shodhyatras for spotting innovation, Green Marathon, Games and sports, Active theatre group etc.

Kindly explore the website http://www.iwsb.in and also visit the IWSB channel on YouTube for a few interesting videos..

Looking forward to taking of on the next leg of the tour to West, SOuth and Central India in the next fortnight…

I am sure you all enjoyed the summary of the session “Realizing your Dreams”. I look forward to your comments and advise.

sreeni@iwsb.in
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