It is very important to be honest to oneself. In the madness of our day to day life, when we hear advice, thoughts, opinions from thousands of voices around us, it is very easy to get lost and pursue a path that does not make us happy but rather makes society happy and feel comfort in its order of things. Discovering your personal calling in the middle of all this chaos, noise, depressive thoughts of people can be difficult. Sometimes, it takes near-death experiences or deep personal tragedies to discover one’s mission in life, the true calling. But such incidents are not really welcome and can’t be planned for. In absence of these incidents, the best way to discover one’s calling to is to have diverse experiences, meet diverse people with thoughts different than yours, reflect often and to keep an open mind during the process. It is important to have the courage to not do what society and people expect you to do and what may seem “right” and “orderly”, but to follow your heart.
Second important lesson I learnt is that character and ethics are everything. To accomplish anything substantial in life requires support and help from good people. Best people come to those who they can trust and know are inherently good, selfless and have strong values. To gain trust of others, be a good leader or build long lasting relationships with people, require one to be committed to the success of others. In order to selflessly help others, one should not be insecure about his/her own professional and personal standing, should not get jealous by the success of those he/she helps and feels happy in the success of others. It takes hundreds of personal interactions to build trust, but just one incident of taking advantage, howsoever small, of somebody or not being honest and fair, to break it. Most startups fail because either the founders cannot trust each other, or the exec team leaves feeling unsatisfied or unfairly treated fairly. Flattery never helps either. Rather there is tremendous value in being direct and honest even when it implies being controversial or saying something which the other person may not like/agree with. People feel comfortable and like being with folks who they know are the same inside as they appear outside. They don’t need to spend their thought cycles figuring out a person really means, and in the event of lack of such clarity, human nature is to always assume that what is really inside is much worse that what appears outside.
