Our journey in life is full of challenges that provide opportunity and growth for us to move beyond our limiting beliefs and circumstances. One such example, is the inspirational story of the CEO of Pepsi Co. and one of Fortune/Time Magazine’s most influential women in the world – Indra Krishnamoorthy Nooyi:

It’s a simple story of an Indian woman who came from a traditional Chennai home in India, to pursue higher studies in the U.S. with very little money and no safety net. If she failed, she failed. This determined young woman, who while studying in Connecticut, worked as a receptionist from midnight to sunrise to earn money and struggled to put together $50 to buy herself a business suit for her first job interview out of Yale. Incidentally, she wasn’t comfortable trying out a formal business suit and ended up buying trousers that reached down only to her ankles. Rejected at the interview, she turned to her professor at the school who asked her what she would wear if she were to be in India. To her reply that it would be a sari, the professor advised her to remain true to her authentic self. Thus, she wore a sari for her next interview. She got the job and continued to maintain that philosophy for the rest of her career. As she says, “I’m so secure in myself; I don’t have to be American to play in the corporate life.”

She worked hard and eventually ended up working for the Boston Consulting Group in 1980. Six years later, she joined Motorola in 1986 as the Vice-President and Director of Corporate Strategy & Planning. She moved to Asea Brown Boveri in 1990 and spent four years as Vice President (corporate strategy & planning). She was part of the top management team responsible for the company’s U.S. business as well as its worldwide industrial businesses, generating about one-third of ABB’s $30 billion in global sales. Eventually she went on to become the CEO of Pepsi, one of the biggest brands in the world. She was also listed as one of the most powerful women in the world by Forbes.

In her corporate world, Indra is in the middle of intriguing business maneuvers and chaotic multi-million dollar moves but when she enters her home, it is like entering a sanctuary of tranquility. Even though Indra is so powerful, she still appreciates her humble roots, and never fails to spend time with her family and kids. She is an amazing woman who never gave up and eventually found her defining moment in life. Do you need an extra push to find your defining moment? Perhaps, you’re going through challenges and you feel like there’s no hope. Today’s challenge can be tomorrow’s defining moment! Contact Sheeba Varghese to help you get started on creating your own defining moment at sheeba@definingmoments365.com.

Scott Harrison, founder of CharityWater.org. A regular guy who finally found his defining moment.

Here’s Scott’s Story.

In 2004, I left the streets of New York City for the shores of West Africa. I’d made my living for years in the big Apple promoting top nightclubs and fashion events, for the most part living selfishly and arrogantly. Desperately unhappy, I needed to change. Faced with spiritual bankruptcy, I wanted desperately to revive a lost Christian faith with action and asked the question: What would the opposite of my life look like?

I signed up for volunteer service aboard a floating hospital with a group called Mercy Ships, a humanitarian organization which offered free medical care in the world’s poorest nations. Operating on surgery ships, they’d built a 25-year track record of astonishing results yet I’d never heard of them.

Top doctors and surgeons from all over the world left their practices and fancy lives to operate for free on thousands who had no access to medical care. I soon found the organization to be full of remarkable people. The chief medical officer was a surgeon who left Los Angeles to volunteer for two weeks – 23 years ago. He never looked or went back. I took the position of ship photojournalist, and immediately traveled to Africa. At first, being the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court felt strange. I traded my spacious midtown loft for a 150-square-foot cabin with bunk beds, roommates and cockroaches. Fancy restaurants were replaced by a mess hall feeding 400+ Army style. A prince in New York, now I was living in close community with 350 others. I felt like a pauper.

But once off the ship, I realized how good I really had it. In new surroundings, I was utterly astonished at the poverty that came into focus through my camera lens. Often through tears, I documented life and human suffering I’d thought unimaginable. In West Africa, I was a prince again. A king, in fact. A man with a bed and clean running water and food in my stomach.

I fell in love with Liberia – a country with no public electricity, running water or sewage – Spending time in a leper colony and many remote villages, I put a face to the world’s 1.2 billion living in poverty. Those living on less than $365 a year – money I used to blow on a bottle of Grey Goose vodka at a fancy club. Before tip.

Our medical staff would hold patient intake “screenings” and thousands would wait in line to be seen, many afflicted with deformities even Clive Barker hadn’t thought of. Enormous, suffocating tumors – cleft lips, faces eaten by bacteria from water-borne diseases. I learned many of these medical conditions also existed here in the west, but were taken care of – never allowed to progress. The amount of blind people without access to the 20-minute cataract surgery that could restore their sight astonished me – all part of this new world.

Over the next eight months, I met patients who taught me the meaning of courage. Many of them had been slowly suffocating to death for years and yet pressing on. Praying, hoping, surviving. It was an honor to photograph them. It was an honor to know them.

Charity.

For me, charity is practical. It’s sometimes easy, more often inconvenient, but always necessary. It’s the ability to use one’s position of influence, relative wealth and power to affect lives for the better. charity is singular and achievable.

There’s a biblical parable about a man beaten near death by robbers. He’s stripped naked and lying roadside. Most people pass him by, but one man stops. He picks him up and bandages his wounds. He puts him on his horse and walks alongside until they reach an inn. He checks him in and throws down his Amex. “Whatever he needs until he gets better.”

Because he could.

The dictionary defines charity as simply the act of giving voluntarily to those in need. It’s taken from the word “caritas,” or simply, love. In Colossians 3, the Bible instructs readers to “put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.”

Although I’m still not sure what that means, I love the idea. To wear charity.

-Scott Harrison

Perhaps you’re in a similar situation as Scott and you need to change your life. Today’s challenge can be tomorrow’s defining moment! Contact Sheeba Varghese to help you get started on creating your own defining moment sheeba@definingmoments365.com.

Little does anyone know that Simon Cowell began his career as a modest mailroom clerk for EMI Music Publishing where his father worked. His connections eventually got him rehired as the assistant to an A&R man. From there, he worked his way up to becoming a record producer. However it wasn’t long before he left the company to set up his own label, Fanfare, with partner Iain Burton. In 1989, Fanfare’s mother company folded, driving the business into bankruptcy, forcing Cowell, deeply in debt, to move back in with his parents. BMG offered the position of A&R Consultant to Cowell when he was only 30 years old. After that, his career took off as he signed several successful artists such as the boy band Westlife and Robson & Jerome. Not only has Simon made records, he also breaks them: over a ten year period, via his company ‘S Records’, he has achieved sales of over 25 million albums, over 70 top 30 records, and 17 Number 1 singles. His band ‘Westlife’ has achieved an impressive 10 Number 1 hits alone. However he became popular when he joined American Idol in 2002, and he started making brutally honest comments. People like “the unusual”; hence his sardonic and biting comments caused the shows rating to soar. In 2003 he sold his share of his company S-Records for a staggering $42 million, making him an instant millionaire. Simon Cowell attained his defining moment by not allowing failures to get the best of him. Although he was knee high in debt, Simon was able to overcome the hurdles and ultimately built a successful career.

Are you ready to make a change in your career? Are you in debt and at a loss of what to do next? Perhaps, this could be the challenge that will open the doors to new possibilities in your life. Today’s challenge can be tomorrow’s defining moment! Contact Sheeba Varghese to help you get started on creating your own defining moment sheeba@definingmoments365.com

Tyler Perry (American playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, and producer of indie films and stage plays)

When he first decided to pursue his dream, he lost everything and was living out of his car. His parents rejected what he was doing, and he was ultimately deemed a failure. Working at a variety of jobs that included used car salesman and collection agent, he scraped together $12,000 in savings. In 1992 he rented out Atlanta’s 14th Street Playhouse and mounted his own production of I Know I’ve Been Changed, with himself as director, producer, promoter, and star. Perry from then on, even after becoming successful, would insist on total creative control over his productions; it was the way he had learned to work.

At first, however, it was a disaster. A grand total of 30 people showed up during the play’s weekend run, by the end of which Perry was discouraged and nearly broke. However, an investment from one of the 30 original attendees kept him from giving up. He performed “I Know I’ve Been Changed” in Atlanta and other smaller southeastern cities over the next few years, losing a job each time he took off to rehearse and present the play. Perry continued to hemorrhage money and to edge closer to homelessness. In 1997 he hit bottom. “I couldn’t eat. I was living in my car, with a friend, or at one of those pay-by-the-week hotels. It was a nightmare for me.” Perry’s mother, Maxine, tried to convince him to give up his theatrical quest, and one of their telephone conversations turned into a confrontation. Instead of being angry, he found that he experienced feelings of forgiveness.

Perseverance Paid Off

Perry rented Atlanta’s House of Blues for one final try at theatrical success in early 1998. The heat in the theater went out, and Perry had feelings of despair as he put on his costume in a freezing dressing room. “This is it. I’m not doing this anymore.”, said Perry. But he happened to look out the window and saw a block-long line of people waiting to see the show. The House of Blues sold out eight times in a row, forcing Perry to move the production to the much larger Fox Theatre. Nine thousand people viewed Perry’s play, the Washington Post estimated, and gave the show a positive review; the theater scene that until then had often been referred to as the chitlin’ circuit soon had the new name of urban theater. Producers who had turned Perry down quickly approached him about new projects, but he chose to collaborate with Dallas evangelical pastor, T.D. Jakes on an adaptation of his book, Woman Thou Art Loosed.

The challenges he faced in his journey gave him opportunity to persevere and create many defining moments in his life. Now he’s one of the wealthiest African Americans in Hollywood, and according to Forbes, he earned $75 million in 2008. Tyler Perry was able to achieve his defining moment by not giving up on his life-long dream. Are you ready to create your defining moment? Contact Sheeba Varghese to help you get started, sheeba@definingmoments365.com.

Source:

“Biography,” Tyler Perry, www.tylerperry.com (August 7, 2005).

“Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” Cinema Review, www.cinemareview.com/cast.asp?movieid=449905&castid=3521 (August 7, 2005).