Never Afraid to Try

There are times in our lives when we just get too comfortable with something, that we just feel the need to shake ourselves off to get more energy. I sometimes look at it as rejuvenating the mind, challenging it, hence it gets new energy so it does not get to a status quo. So happens, according to some theories of aging, it is a good thing so the mind does not get old sooner than it should.

But, aging aside, I guess the spirit to never afraid to try something new is crucial to have in the most of our lives. Because that spirit will always enable us to get somewhere that we never expect to get. And most of all, that spirit will open our eyes about new things to learn, that may make us to be better people.

To me personally, my most meaningful, eye opener experience, was when I did a couple of jobs that were actually beyond what I thought I would do, if I were not outside of my comfort zone.

In my final year to get my master degree in Melbourne, I decided to try getting a part-time job. My objective was very simple: I just wanted to know what it felt like working in a very different culture, and a totally different environment. So, I searched the newspaper, and tried applying to almost every little vacancy that I could find. Then finally, I landed on a job as a tele-marketer for a roof-sealant company.

First of all – I had no idea what roof sealant was. And secondly – telemarketing was something that I would definitely avoid if I were back in Indonesia. I was never comfortable making cold sales calls. But then, I said to myself, why not try – at least for once in my life I should try something that I thought I would never do. And the work place was actually far from where I lived – and I thought it would be quite interesting to see other sides of the city. So with that thought, I took the job.

In doing this job, what I had to do was to call people from a list of numbers that my boss would give me every day that I came to work, which was 3 times a week, from 10am to 4pm. I had to persuade them through using the script that explained what the product was all about, then if they agreed to give it a try, my boss would go to this person’s house and do the survey to determine prices and everything else. These calls, were called ‘leads’. The aim of the calls was not to make final sales, but just getting our foot in the door, so to speak.

God knows how many times I got the f*** off word, slammed at, screamed at, cursed at. But there were times when I really could get a lead – though not necessarily gave my boss the final sales (thankfully I still got paid!).

About 2 or 3 months I did this job, then I thought of searching another job which was closer to where I lived. So I landed on a job as an interviewer for a call survey centre in a marketing research company called Colmar Brunton Research (which apparently was a very respected agency for sensory research). I had curiosity driving me to take this job. A call survey centre did not exist in Indonesia and I was curious at how it worked. And I guess I could not forget the researcher in me – I wanted to know how Australians reacted to call surveys.

Again I experienced getting the same experiences that I got when working as a tele-marketer. All the f*** off words, phone slamming, cursing, screaming. Some people also answered the survey with phoney answers, just to make fun of it (which would have annoyed me but I just sighed and moved on). But there were times when people really reacted to my calls – and I actually enjoyed doing the calls.

These two experiences taught me a great deal of patience, and a great deal of ability to persuade others to just listen to me for 3 minutes. When you only had your voice to persuade people, you really had to work hard. Though I was bored, I could not ‘sound’ bored, I still had to put a big smile on my face so my voice could sound cheerful and nice enough for people to want to listen to me long enough (before they slammed the phone down).

But most importantly, through doing these jobs at the stage of life when I actually ‘had it all’ to have a better career, I learned that doing these more menial jobs at that stage was energizing. For its sense of simplicity – to some extent, and the sense of having to put different tactics to make the boredom actually worked for me rather than killed me. And imagining how many people actually relied on such jobs to survive, just made me wanted to persist more in finding tactics to fight my boredom and make it meaningful, each time I came to work.

I am not saying that to learn something one would have to go to the extent that he or she has to do the menial tasks. But maybe, each one of us should ask ourselves the same question everytime we feel that our energy is down, “What have I done differently lately?”. And the answer to that, may be is the energy that we are looking for.

In many ways, I guess, doing different things is the fuel to our souls, because they are challenged, charged up. I know some people will say that it is obvious. My question is, do we really do that, often enough, so our soul is fed regularly with different experiences, different learnings, different taste of life. And they can come from many different angles.

A friend of mine told me that it was difficult for her to play with her kids the first time she had to be a full time mom again. Until, she read Pippi Longstocking and got inspired to ‘act crazy’ like Pippi. And that, not only helped her to connect with her kids, but also actually gave her a sense of freedom. And that sounded to me, that she has found a way to rejuvenate her soul. And she was not afraid to act crazy – because she knew it would only lead her somewhere better. And it did, from the way I looked at how she connected with her kids when I met her.

So, let’s see how far we are willing to try many different things at every angle of our lives. And who knows what we will find right there at the corner that we never even bother to look at – our hearts or heads or both, may find that it is the corner that the soul has been wanting to go to. And at the end of the day, even if that corner turns out to be a place that is too hard to journey on, at the very least, you have tried it, and you have nourished your soul.