Finding your mojo by continuously reinventing yourself

For a few years now, I have been working with business and social leaders, young entrepreneurs, writers and artists and many others seeking to rediscover their mojo. The primary space for this work is Reflections, an offsite programme run at specific times of the year, usually in Uttarakhand. Many participants have benefitted and truly rediscovered their mojo.

This is the story of one such person, Pritha Sen, who has been a part of Reflections, as a faculty.

Mojo in the urban dictionary is the quality that fills us with energy, makes us more attractive to people and creates a virtuous cycle that makes us successful. It’s a bagful of invisible charms that one dips into to rejuvenate. When you find your Mojo, you are in that wonderful space where everything about you is in synch. You operate from a deep understanding of Self, follow your Passion and believe you are working towards your Purpose. A pretty tall order you may say and wonder whether it is possible at all. 

Let me share with you an example of a person who has turned a lot of conventional wisdom on its head and has been exploring, finding and rediscovering her Mojo, each time in a different place, through the many years that I have had the pleasure of knowing her.

A conventional start with a touch of empathy

Pritha Sen (58) was a post grad in history who like many other educated women in the pre-liberalisation days became a school teacher. Students loved her, her classes were in demand, yet she found something missing. She decided to explore beyond and trained to teach children with special needs and achieved some firsts in that profession. Circumstances beyond her control put an end to that career but she was not dejected. Instead, quite serendipitously, she was into journalism, discovering much that was happening in the world. Empathetic and equity-driven, it was no surprise then that she made a huge success of an award-winning page she launched in on the social sector. That was when she decided to quit and join the development sector as a consultant specialising in documentation, evaluations and trainings for the social sector. Clients agreed that her work was top quality.

Side steps and cross steps

Travelling for work took her to the remotest corners of the country and she explored the history, culture and food (an abiding interest since childhood) of these places. Soon she found the next level of her work, one that is the current buzzword in the social sector lexicon –sustainable livelihoods. She looked closer and found a gold mine in local foods, their histories and age-old recipes that told her about the communities she worked with and the ignored indigenous wisdom on nutrition. She recognised the next important milestone in her life and plunged into it to become part of a movement that is sweeping the globe – returning to one’s roots and identity with healthy regional cuisine. 

Writing on food developed as an aside and Pritha had soon built a reputation as an authority and food historian. Today, apart from working with everything else she has in the past, she has been one of the forces behind the resounding success of a restaurant brand in two of the most competitive food markets in the country. Recently, she was mightily thrilled about singing with a bluesgrass band from the US at a café in Kolkata.

This may sound like the story of a confused person. If that were the case, Pritha would not have been able to create so many successes. There was hard work, making new connections and the difficult task of learning new skills involved every single time.

Let’s unpack these a little more.

If business as usual is not your thing, don’t be apologetic

Pritha is truly dancing in her mojo when she sets up new challenges for herself. Not for her the task of dealing with managing and maintaining business as usual for too long. She gets restless. She understands and accepts this aspect of her personality. Combined with the need to be the best at what she does, she has to stretch every time to rebuild her knowledge and skills, drawing heavily on the learnings from her previous experiences. She cannot be one without the other to create better versions of herself each time. One that is rooted in the sum of her past and the addition of the new. We know many amongst us who get bored without fresh challenges but still remain glued to the old and therefore lose their mojo. They would be well advised to explore and find new challenges.

Keep your interests alive

Like many among us, Pritha has multiple interests. However, unlike most others, she has never allowed those interests to be buried for too long. Again a great example for all of us with varied interests. You never know where it could lead to.

Equity is a deeply held belief for her. And she weaves that into almost everything she does. Like teaching children with special needs or bringing the social sector into focus in mainline media or hiring young talented cooks from small town who need backing to make it big, , Purpose is seamlessly built into all that she does.

Pritha does not think of her life in the boxes that my unpacking here discusses. She lives it in the questions that she asks herself when she experiences a persistent flagging in her interest and in making those difficult choices. She keeps finding her mojo everytime she begins to lose it. You can too. It’s not always that you must have just one goal. Pushing her limits, Pritha has found several and each time passed the test in her own eyes. This last is the most important.

Sanjeev Roy is the founder of Bullzi Inc. Amongst other things, he is a Coach and runs Reflections – a programme for leaders to reinvent, recharge and-re-energize themselves. By Finding the Best in themselves. 

The next Reflections programme is scheduled between the 10th and 14th of April, 2019. Write in if you too want to rediscover your mojo.

This article first appeared in the Mint on 23rd January, 2019.