Growth Demands Consistency: Learning to Stay Present Despite Judgment

“For a long time, I believed my biggest weakness was my English. Coming from a Hindi medium background, I often felt hesitant speaking around fluent and confident people, especially in finance and corporate spaces. But over time, I realised communication is not inborn. Like any skill, it improves through repetition and consistency,” said Rajat Gupta, an investment banker with a non-English background.

Today, while pursuing the CFA program alongside his role in investment banking, Rajat looks back at the journey as something much bigger than learning a language. It became a process of rebuilding confidence, one small step at a time.

Till class 8, I studied in a Hindi medium environment where almost everyone around me shared a similar background. Naturally, I never felt that my communication skills were weak.

Things changed when I entered coaching classes and later moved into English-medium academics. That was the first time I felt genuinely behind others. Many students around me came from stronger academic and communication backgrounds, and suddenly, I became extremely conscious while speaking.

The difficult part was not understanding concepts. Most of the time, I understood what was being taught. The real problem was expressing myself confidently.

There were moments when classmates laughed at my pronunciation or reacted dismissively when I spoke. Small incidents, but enough to affect confidence deeply at that age.

One particular exam completely changed how I looked at this problem.

I remember scoring extremely low in a social science paper despite writing conceptually correct answers. When I approached my teacher, he explained that although my answers were correct, the paper had too many spelling and grammatical mistakes.

For the first time, I realised that knowledge alone was not enough if I could not communicate it properly. Instead of feeling defeated, I decided to start working on the problem seriously, even if improvement took years.

I did not follow any fancy strategy initially. I simply focused on repetition.

I started maintaining notebooks where I wrote down new words, meanings, pronunciations, and spellings repeatedly. Every unfamiliar word was revised multiple times until it became natural. Gradually, this became a habit instead of a temporary motivation.

At the same time, I increased my exposure to English through small daily activities:

1. • Reading newspapers and articles
   • Watching English movies with subtitles
   • Reading novels and fiction
   • Listening carefully to pronunciation
   • Practising conversations with family members

One thing that helped me significantly was speaking without overthinking embarrassment. Initially, I mostly practised with people I felt comfortable around, especially my sister, who corrected me patiently. Slowly, hesitation started reducing.

Over time, I realised improvement in communication comes down to three simple things:

1. • Reading consistently
   • Writing regularly
   • Speaking repeatedly

That became my framework.

During college, I intentionally took up responsibilities that pushed me to communicate more. I became involved in team coordination, technical activities, and drafting messages or updates. Even though my communication was not perfect initially, the repeated exposure helped tremendously.

I also started recording my own voice, practising mock interviews, and observing how I sounded while speaking. None of this created an instant transformation. But over time, the difference became visible.

As my communication slowly improved, something else started improving too: confidence.

Earlier, I used to avoid speaking because I feared judgment. But after repeated practice, I realised that confidence is not something that appears suddenly. It grows when you repeatedly do uncomfortable things despite hesitation.

Even today, while working in investment banking, I meet people who have had polished communication skills since childhood. Naturally, their fluency may feel smoother. But I eventually realised that workplaces value much more than language alone. Strong subject knowledge, analytical thinking, and problem-solving ability matter deeply as well.

Communication helps create opportunities, but competence sustains them. That understanding helped me stop comparing myself constantly with others.

There were also phases where self-doubt became mentally exhausting.

Over time, I realised that improvement is difficult if your mind is constantly distracted, anxious, or emotionally unstable. That is when I consciously started focusing more on:

1. • Meditation
   • Yoga
   • Reducing distractions
   • Maintaining focus
   • Staying away from unnecessary comparison

I genuinely feel that today's students struggle not only because of competition, but because of constant noise and overstimulation. Maintaining mental clarity became equally important for me during this journey.

When I look back now, I no longer see this journey purely as “improving English.” It was really a process of slowly rebuilding self-confidence through consistency.

The biggest lesson I learned is that weak communication is not a permanent limitation. It is simply a skill gap that improves through enough exposure and repetition.

Today, while Rajat looks back at this journey as something far bigger than simply improving communication skills.

Under the mentorship of Aswini Bajaj, he gradually came to understand that growth is rarely instant. What inspired him most was the emphasis on consistency, self-belief, and showing up every single day despite discomfort. Over time, Rajat began seeing communication not as a fixed weakness but as a skill that could be strengthened through patience, repetition, and continuous effort.

1. • Communication improves through repetition: Reading, writing, listening, and speaking consistently make a bigger difference than shortcuts.
   • Confidence is built slowly: It grows every time you push yourself despite hesitation.
   • Comparison slows growth: Focusing too much on others often delays your own progress.
   • Competence matters deeply: Strong knowledge and thinking eventually earn respect.
   • Your starting point does not define your future: With patience and consistency, meaningful transformation is possible from any background.