Grow through life, Not Go through life

You are the Driver

The first and most important thing to know is You are the Driver. Many times we keep focusing more on things which are not in our control to justify our lack of enthusiasm or lack of success. Just like while driving a car, you navigate through tough terrains focusing on how best you can navigate, similarly for career, you are the driver. Difficulties will be there but focus on your abilities, strengths and what you can do best.

Take Inspiration from Others, Compare only with yourself

Our mental state can make worst out of best or best out of worst. The most derogatory way to demotivate ourselves or to get over-confident is to compare with others. We should read about others, listen about their success or failures to learn lessons but not to compare. Each one of us have different strengths and can mark our success in different ways. If we think, Bill Gates became a hero at age 25 but I am not then I will only frustrate myself. Rather, I will learn from Bill Gates journey to get inspiration but find my own core, sweet spot where I can succeed. The most difficult part for us is to look inside, to evaluate ourselves, know our strengths, areas of improvements. Take that exercise quite often and compare on your growth, how you have evolved and the way you want to bring more improvements.

Focus on Circle of Influence and know about your circle of Concern

Time and energy is limited. We can either choose to use it in areas we can do better or to loose it in gossiping or blaming about things which we can do nothing about. The way we act the circles change amazingly for our surprise. As you focus more on Circle of Influence, your circle will grow and you will be able to impact and change things which were previously in your Circle of Concern but you had no power. For Eg: As a lateral hire in a company I worked for , I struggled with onboarding on the product, systems and most important bonding with the team. Major reason was language. Most of the team would speak in the local language. In my mental frame, I blamed the language barrier all the time and this prevented me from even performing at the my normal level. I realized that I should focus on what best I can do here and wherever I have questions I can reach out to my team members and definitely they were helpful and extending. Though I learnt this lesson hard way and it had a detrimental effect on my confidence for a year.

Learning is a continuous life time process

Learning never stops. Always invest in your learning. Know your strengths and build on them more and more as you progress. Even if you spend 1 day a month, its a compounded growth. The other aspect of investing in your learning is - You will always remain confident and humble. In this world anything stagnant, starts stinking. Water till the time its flowing, its beautiful and full of utility. But if you stop the water in a canal, it will bread mosquitos, insects and cause of harmful diseases. Similarly, till the time we are learning, our life will be full of meaning for ourselves and for others.

Forgive Yourself, Learn from Mistakes

Its said failure is a success till the time we learn from it. We all are humans, we will commit mistakes. We need to learn to get up and move ahead with greater enthusiasm.