Mentoring young adults from deprived section of Indian society
On some weekends, I volunteer with an organization that mentors young adults from very poor sections of society. They teach them English language skills and also other life skills and knowledge that can help them break out of the circle of poverty and get jobs or build a career in a chosen field. Usually, this organization gives me some guidelines or broad agenda that I am expected to cover in my sessions with these youngsters. These sessions are held over a video call — either Skype or Zoom.
Today I had my first session with a new batch for them. This batch is from a neighborhood in Agra, the city of Taj Mahal. This session was meant to be just an introductory session without a prescribed agenda. There were six young men and two women on the other side. (This is usually the case — the males always outnumber the females. The section of society that these people come from, still does not allow their daughters to go out and make a career or get a job in the real world.) I started by asking each one of them what they want to do in life. The answers were very diverse and very interesting — ranging from IAS officer (Indian Administrative Service — the premium and most coveted government job in India), police officer, model/actor, singer, engineer, choreographer, entrepreneur and what have you. I was very impressed with their dreams. Going by the background they come from I would have expected them to choose quick and careers that pay the bills like salesperson, teacher, mechanic, handy man, etc.
I asked them to set the agenda for our discussion by stating what they expected from the session. Each one of them came up with something or the other which we finally zeroed down to 3 broad questions.
I asked the students to share what they expected from the session. Broadly, they came up with the following three expectations:
1. How to achieve your goals?
2. How to stay motivated?
3. How to build confidence, and handle fears?
I spent a few minutes elaborating on these points and getting their buy-in on whether my understanding of their expecations was correct. I am writing this post to share what I suggested to them as the answers to these queries.
1. To achieve your goals:
a. Write down your goal in a notebook with a date by which you want to achieve it.
b. Also, write it on pieces of paper/posters/sticky notes and put them where you can see them regularly — like your washroom mirror, the door of your room, your desk, etc. Also put it on your mobile phone wall paper. (Some of them said that they live in cramped living spaces and do not want to display their goals to everyone around them. Then, I suggested that they could put it on the cover of their mobile phone, or notepads or whatever they are comfortable with. The idea is to make it visible to you as often as possible.)
c. Then, break down your goal into sub goals, or intermediate steps that you need to achieve to reach the final goal.
d. Make a time table to achieve the sub-goals.
e. Have a month-wise plan to achieve the sub-goals.
f. Break down the month-wise plan into a week-wise plan.
g. Break the week-wise plan into a daily plan or routine that you will follow. (Don’t try to make a daily plan for more than one week. Just take the first week’s plan and make a day-wise plan for the first week.)
h. Review your actions against the day’s plan at the end of the day, and make a plan for the next day accordingly.
i. After every month review your achievement of sub-goals and revise the plan if you feel the need. This may be necessary if you think the plan is too aggressive or too conservative.
2. To stay motivated:
a. Make sure that your actions against your daily plans are your first priority at any given time. The more actions you are able to take, the more motivated you will feel to move to the next step. There will be occasions where you will feel too lazy or find some excuse to avoid taking action or to avoid following your plan. Try not to fall in this trap and keep taking action. Once you start, your motivation will keep growing with every small achievement.
b. Find an accountability partner — a friend, sibling, parent or anyone else. This person should be a positive person — someone you can trust, someone who is genuinely interested in your success. Please share your goal and your plans with the accountability partner. Ask this person to spend 3 to 5 minutes everyday to check on your progress. Once you feel responsible towards someone else, your motivation to take action and work towards your goals will be higher. If you can find an accountability partner who is working on their own goals, you can be their accountability partner. Such a partnership will work beautifully if you both are committed towards your goals. You can also give each other small rewards for staying on track or achieving small goals.
c. Avoid spending time with negative or cynical people. The more time you spend with negative people, lesser your motivation will be. Try and spend more time with positive and encouraging people. Sometimes we cannot avoid negative people because they are in our family but the less we interact with them, the better it is for our state of mind.
3. How to build confidence and handle fear?
a. Confidence comes from knowledge and action. As you work hard regularly and move closer to your goals, your confidence will start growing and fear will start diminishing.
b. The important aspect about building your self confidence is your self-talk. Our mind is constantly thronging with thoughts. I read somewhere that a study says that for an average human being 85% of their thoughts are negative and only 15% are positive. This is an area that requires conscious hard work. The minute you sense a negative thought try to take a pause and remind yourself to think positive. This is not easy but is necessary to build confidence and overcome fears.
After this, I asked the students to do an exercise that helped them get some insights on their goals and the next steps that they should be taking.
The students did seem happy and positive at the end of the session as we said our good byes and agreed to reconnect soon in another session.
For me personally, it was like a revision of my own goals, my plans, and my daily routine. I left feeling energized and positive, and ready to take on the world.
I am requesting this organization to let me do more sessions with this batch, and perhaps with other batches. It will do me a lot of good.
