During our dinner’s ritualistic sharing of how the day went at school, home, or office, my daughters noticed a distinct bounce in my demeanor. I had returned from my company’s annual sales kickoff. My daughters made me aware how my eyes lit up while talking about being fearless, being focused, and being first – all in conjunction of furthering India center’s transformation.
After having observed my behavior for the last few months, you might say, I should have seen it coming. But I did not realize the power of words, the power of positive vibes, emotions, and actions.
Ever heard of something so startling that you wished it was a dream, and you would open your eyes and take a sigh of relief, “Thank God! It was just a dream.” A crackle from my daughter brought me back from my thoughts. “Dad on our next trip there is an opportunity for us to be like the eagle, soaring high in the sky, live the fearless, focused, and first that you have been talking about lately. As I was trying to guess what my daughters were talking about, they said “Skydiving! Maybe 10,000 feet or more and of course tandem jump. Wouldn’t it be awesome?”
I was not sure what I heard. Were these voices in my head? I asked them with a reciprocating smile, “Girls, are you sure of what you are talking about?” And they replied in smiles. At that point in time I realized I had to maintain my calmest composure (remember the Emotional Intelligence discovery that I had recently learned), not allowing my facial muscles to show the emotional turmoil, the scared (read petrified), feelings of someone opening the door of the plane for you to jump off!
You might think, I had all the reasons (both personal and professional) to give a high-five to my daughters and say, “Yay! I have been waiting for it all my life. Let’s do it!
Professionally, I was high on adrenaline, going full throttle in kicking off our GIC’s 05th Phase of Transformation – Digital Acceleration, visiting the Sales Kick Off India, and hosting our new CEO. Personally, armed with my E Intelligence discovery and contributed to my first chapter on Saint Kabir”. After this, to be the Indiana Jones of the skies, my emotions seemed to be on a roller coaster. I felt like an atom in a large container bombarding against the walls.
If my emotions were mapped, needless to say, it would look like a simulated data modeled for the CMS particle detector on the large hadron collider at CERN with different ends screaming—dude, do it. It’s your daughters’ dare. You don’t need to listen to your daughters as they are GenNext, and by miles more adventurous. Please bear in mind the height – 10,000 feet. The only saving grace was when the daughters said that they will go first for the tandem jump.
For me, a purebred, born and brought up in Armed Forces Cantonments, it was a fantastic awakening to have my daughters’ take the first dives and then I did the non-thinkable, took the leap, dive, the jump of faith.
With wind under my wings, we truly felt like an eagle soaring high in the sky, it was the embodiment of living life, being fearless, focused and first of my many!
