Be the Initiative

Since I started university for my bachelor’s, I have been working on my personal development and growth so that I can become a competent individual and have a positive influence on my society. I was pretty satisfied with my growth, joining course after course, making plan after plan during my free time until the winter vacation that happened recently gave me time to reflect and change my whole thought process.

The winter vacation, which I assumed would be for a month, was extended to three months, which gave me a lot of time to reflect and think about my purpose, my goals, and everything. During this reflection, I realized that for the past few years, I have been working on my own personal development and mental growth, but the people around me are still the same including my fellow students, my friends, my family. I am not able to have a positive influence on the people around me. How am I supposed to change the whole society if I just stay focused on my own personal development and do not help them?

This thought hit me, and I realized that it was actually my responsibility to help the students around me grow as well, because they do not have the same opportunities that I have been given. I had access to online opportunities, teachers, and resources to help me grow, along with the mindset that I have developed.

I had a conversation about this with my mentor, and I asked her that now that I have realized this—that it was my responsibility to help them in the first place but I am not a teacher or someone in authority,it was thier job to help the students and they are the ones to blame, how am I going to guide the students at university? How am I going to help them? How am I going to bring them together to grow and achieve their full potential?

My teacher asked me, “There must be different societies in your university. You can join a society and volunteer there to help the students.” I told her that I did not know of any society in our university. We do not get such opportunities. I study at a very normal local university.

She replied, “If there is no society, then make one. Why don’t you take the initiative?”

This one statement of her changed my whole thought process. It made me realize that for the past few years, I had been blaming my university, the teachers, and the students themselves for not working on personal development and growth. But in the first place, I had the training, I had the learning, and I was someone who was already working on herself. It was my responsibility to create a platform for them to help them grow as well.

I also realized that this journey was not meant to be alone. My personal development, my growth, my becoming competent all of this was not supposed to be done in isolation. It was meant to be a journey as a community, with my friends and fellow students growing together.

That is what made me realize how important it is to take responsibility. It changed my mindset and made me understand that blaming others for everything is not the solution. Rather, taking initiative and being the first one to offer help is what makes a person competent and  capable of bringing positive change in society and having a meaningful influence.