What made the difference then? Sunita's story

Hello again everyone. In a recent post, I featured stories from 5 friends whose lives didn't quite go according to their original plans and they had to switch courses in their adult life, with varying results. It was a rather controversial piece that provoked a huge debate - that's what I like, I love it when my blog can make people think about the issues and reflect upon how they have should live their own lives. In today's post, I was going to talk about 5 friends who have been successful against the odds but I realized that one woman was well and truly blown my mind so instead I'll just focus on her incredibly story. I shall try to identify the X-factor(s) that made her different from everyone else. Once again, I have to change her identity to protect her privacy, because I shall be revealing some details about her journey which she'll rather not make public. Let's call her Sunita - she is my half Indian, half English friend who's a designer.

I hope you will like Sunita's story.

Sunita had a very rough start to life, it is not something she likes to talk about even with good friends and I feel privileged that she is shared her story with me.. Her parents divorced when she was young and her Indian father remarried. The failure of the marriage and the divorce left her mother depressed: she became an alcoholic who just lived off the alimony payments and Sunita couldn't wait to become old enough to leave home as an adult as her mother became impossible to deal with. Things were pretty awful for Sunita as a teenager, her father had effectively turned his back on her - well, at least the alimony and child support payments kept coming but he wasn't a part of her life and her mother couldn't hold down a job because of her drinking. Sunita stayed out of the house as her mother would either be in a foul mood when sober or just a nightmare to deal with when drunk. Sunita turned to comfort eating to seek solace and became quite obese as a result but one other thing that made Sunita feel good was art. She had an eye for beauty and would spend her days in the many museums of London, looking at all kinds of art.

Sunita loved sketching. It was something she tried hard to keep from her mother as her mother thought she was wasting her time drawing instead of studying. However, Sunita's flair for art and design didn't go unnoticed: she knew she would never afford to go to one of those expensive, fancy art schools in London to get a degree there, but thanks to the power of social media, she was able to join various online groups and see what others who shared the same interests got up to. They shared their works online, posted photos/videos of their latest creations and encouraged each other. Sunita made many friends there with like-minded creative young people and some of them suggested that her drawings were good enough for competitions. Her friends were the first who told her that she had a real talent.

Sunita found solace in art

At first, Sunita wasn't interested in these competitions but curiousity soon got the better of her. She went along with some of her friends to some of these events just to network but eventually started taking part in these design competitions along with her friends. Through one of these events, she got to know an engineer who was putting together a new device but struggled with the actual presentation of the device. Whilst she knew nothing about the engineering, she thought, yeah I can create a design for your device, just let me sit down and sketch you a few options. Within moments, Sunita had impressed this engineer who said, "normally in a big company, they'd pay some professionals to do the design but as we're a start up, I'm afraid we can't afford to pay you but can we come to some kind of arrangements for us to use your services?" Sunita was shocked, for she had just gone from a troubled teenager interested in sketching to a designer whose work was good enough for the engineering world.

The engineer was unable to pay her but said that he would recommend her to another company who were looking to develop new products as well: they are a bigger company with a budget and can afford to pay Sunita a decent fee. Sunita did the design for this other company's products and they were so happy with her work that they recommended her services to other companies as well. Fast forward a few years, Sunita is now working full time as a product designer, working hand in hand with a number of engineers, making sure that their products are not just functional but aesthetically pleasing to the consumer. She did it all without having much of a formal education but she always takes the time to study the needs of her clients, understand their products and she refuses to let the lack of her formal education be a problem - in fact, most of her clients don't know much about her troubled past (it's not something she is proud of or even talks about), they just know her as that quirky designer who was full of ideas. Being happy and successful now, she has lost a lot of weight and is in great shape today. You'd never suspect she was once obese. 

Sunita's story has a happy ending!

So let's look at this success story and try to identify some of the crucial good decisions that Sunita made. Despite the fact that Sunita was obviously very talented, she didn't have the opportunity to get a degree or a diploma in the fine arts. In fact, she didn't believe in herself at first but managed to find a community of like-minded friends who encouraged her and helped her believe in herself when she got no support at all from her family. Many of Sunita's friends were somewhat older, most experienced and they knew what they were talking about. They weren't afraid to criticize her as well when she did something wrong. Let me point out please that we need to be very careful here: let me give you a simple example of how even seemingly nice friends can offer useless forms of encouragement.

When I was in school back in the 1990s, this friend knew that I was going to take part in an important gymnastics competition and he said to me, "I hope you will score a perfect ten at your gymnastics competition!" And I was like, look that's not statistically possible - you need to perform a routine with enough difficulty, worth a ten and execute it totally flawlessly, in order to get that perfect ten. That was only possible at the highest level of gymnastics (please see video below), but never at national level in Singapore those days. In those days, a score exceeding 8.50 would be very respectable already. None of my routines had enough difficulty for a ten start-value to begin with, I tried to explain that to my friend but he thought I was splitting hairs with him instead of congratulating him on knowing a reference to gymnastics. This is a simple example of when somebody is far more interested in saying something encouraging in the quest to be 'nice' without any understanding of the situation - it may be pleasant to listen to such people of course, but their advice is practically useless and at least Sunita took advice from people who knew what they were talking about.

Sunita took part in competitions and recognized the value of networking. Ironically, by her own admission, she never won any prizes at any of those competitions she took part in. She jokes that the biggest prize she won was when that engineer gave her the opportunity to do the design for her device, her first big break that led to the start of her career as a product designer. Sunita's story demonstrated the power of networking - if she had simply been a lonely teenager sitting around sketching in her bedroom, she would simply become a lonely adult still drawing sketches on her own in her bedroom. She got out there and met people who could help her, guide her and point her in the right direction towards success. If you are indeed talented, you have to put yourself out there and let people know what you're capable of; you can't expect people to come and find you. By that token, you must be very proactive, not passive.

Furthermore, Sunita knew what made her happy. She told me, "I was this geeky, fat, teenager who was incredibly shy and had a low self-esteem but I could let me art do the talking for me. I hated myself but at least I loved my drawings. People looked at my drawings and could see what I was trying to express: it was easier for me to draw my feelings than to try to speak to another person sometimes." How many times have I come across Asian kids who are forced down some path by their parents, only to embark in a career they have absolutely no interest or passion in? Why do these seemingly intelligent Asian kids allow their misguided parents to make their lives an absolute misery? Can you tell us what makes you happy and if your career choice will bring you happiness? If it doesn't, then why aren't you doing what makes you happy then? What is your definition of success and is your happiness part of that equation?

Are your choices leading you to happiness?

If you clearly know where your talents lie, then you need to play to your strengths rather than try to study what everyone else is studying. When Sunita's mother took any interest in her studies, it was to try to get her to focus on the core academic subjects and not waste any time on art. She did have a point: it is pretty difficult to make a living doing anything creative, but what Sunita's mother didn't realize was just how talented her daughter was. Sunita's mother wanted her to at least have a plan B, something to fall back on, which Sunita didn't agree with. "Yeah right, you want me to spend how many years to get qualified as an accountant before pursuing my dreams? No way. Life is too short, besides, I don't want to be an accountant, so why bother with a plan B when I can focus all my energy on making plan A work, so I wouldn't need a plan B?" Well, I am glad to say that things have worked out great for Suntia thus far.

So that's it from me on Sunita's story - I thought it was nice to share a story with a happy ending for a change! Have you met anyone like Sunita? What lessons do you think we can learn from someone like Sunita? If you were in her shoes, would you have done anything differently? Please do leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.