The doubts remain!

It has been a tough last few weeks. I started a new job and along with setting up a new home, working on relationships - it has not been an easy ride especially with the intense travel required for the first project.

Is this what I want to do? Was the MBA helpful? Am I being honest to myself? Am I doing my best work? Am I doing my best at home? Am I investing in the right opportunities? Am I making new connections? Am I reaching out to my huge secondary networks?

The answer is 'no'. An emphatic no to many.

What went wrong?

It is not wrong as much as I lost focus. I spent a great deal of time reflecting on myself - both personal and professional - in the first few months at INSEAD. I did what I had to do and it was a very intense but beautiful time for me and Bhanu during her pregnancy and then the birth. Those were magical moments. We shared experiences traveling and living in France that we will most likely never get again. I do not regret any minute of it.

However, I strayed a bit off my professional goals. Even more for Bhanu who is now in a completely new country, new family, new setting, new home - and still needs to figure out her career path. She is slowly putting her thoughts back into her career and with her laser sharp mind, I am sure she will figure something out. She is smart like that.

This is more of a selfish post - so I will get back to my goals. I blindingly followed the herd at INSEAD recruitment by pushing for consulting. Given the limited options, it seemed like the best bet at the time. I am still excited by the Blue Ridge opportunity - there are slivers of hope strewn across. The meeting with the executive team and PE folks in Minneapolis was inspiring.  I should have done much more personally - first, introduced myself and my background. That is a foot in the door to get my voice into the conversation much earlier and easier to assert my opinion throughout the day. Second, I should have done the latter which is - added my opinion when I could rather than holding myself back.

But the ray of hope is that these are learning experiences. The faster I learn from them and improve my work, the better will be my work. The people at Blue Ridge are absolutely not smarter than I am - but the good ones are just working harder. Okay - so what? What do I do now?

 I 'need to leverage my background and education' to make an impact. Not in terms of bragging about it, but the actual learnings I have from it. I can't continue to do good work. I have to 'do my best' in whatever I do. As Yanik Silver said in the 'The Unmistakable Creative' podcast, you have to give 100%. Not just get by. Not just 'chalta hai'. Do the best! I have done that in pockets during my career but not at a stretch. It has to be consistent. There is no other way to a meaningful career.

Okay - so how do I figure out what I want to be best at? That is going to be a journey. It is going to take me to some pitfalls along the way (likely I am in one right now), but that is okay. That is where I am going to learn the most. Remember - life is not a straight journey. It is an entangled mess of a journey. But the good ones get up, learn from those failures and be successful.

What does success mean for me?
To be a thought leader / expert in an area of domain I enjoy working in. It could evolve over time and it will most likely will but as the second grade saying was - a life without ambition is like a ship without rudder. So it is better to have an anchor and then move it along as life moves on.

How do I reach there? What are the life elements that would shape my success? This is critical. I have to create a structure in my life to shape the journey towards success. It cannot be a messy adhoc way like I live right now. I had laid many of these things in 2016 before INSEAD. So while I need to revisit my previous writings, the key elements would be family, meditation, health (both physical and emotional), personal and professional network and possibly more. Create measurable goals for me to track my performance. Don't just live Nikhil. Do the best. Be the best. Be happy!

The wait!

Human psyche is fragile. We let ourselves be smashed around with the constant stream of information thrown at us in this age. Our egos are sometimes bruised while pumped up at other times. What psychological constructs can we use as barriers against these high amplitudes of emotions? Or frankly, do we even need to?

The past one year has been such a time for my psyche. It has been constant pressure and a life full of changes and surprises. In hindsight, I might not have it any other way. But one thing, that has kept me going is this image of a beautiful future together.

It has been a long wait for that to happen and now it is just a week away. It still doesn't feel like it. We knew the long wait almost two years back. It seemed so far out then. But now it is almost over. It feels unreal. Something that I had dreamed of for so long is finally going to be part of my life forever.

But here is the catch. It would soon be normal. Living together would not have the same excitement a few years down the line like it is right now. This is the theory of default happiness. Whatever happens in our lives, our happiness levels peak or fall, but then they tend to go back to the default levels pretty soon. For example, a study says that one person who won a lottery and another who got paraplegic, after a year, happiness level of both people would tend to go back to the level before either won lottery or became paraplegic.

So, while I juggle between the excitement and expected fall back to normal happiness level, I need to be conscious of this wait. I need to feel immense gratitude when tough days come back that this is what we dreamed of for years. To be able to share every moment of our lives together. It is worth the tough times ahead.

But till then, I am so excited to be able to wake up next to my beautiful wife every day for rest of my life.

I can't wait!!!

Empathy and Sympathy!

I observed that I sometimes lay down my thoughts whether thoughts or questions or comments, without fully appreciating the possible mindset of the other person.

For example, I should be provide more energy and boost to someone who is not having a good day. Be sympathetic in such a case. Massage their ego - not to gain a favor but to make them feel better. At other times, you might feel the other person is just bragging - try to understand the actual reasons behind them. Maybe they are actual experts in the area and there might be something for me to learn from it. Observe their actions and understand why that makes me feel like they are bragging rather than just being confident. I can then aim to not make those mistakes.

How might I get better at this?
I need to be much more conscious in observing others' behaviors. Rather than focus on what I am supposed to do, pause and better understand the other person. Be empathetic. Get into their shoes if possible and understand their needs. Ask them how they are feeling! Remember their issues and ask them about it at some other time. Make that personal connections at a deeper level than just the regular tip of the iceberg discussions.

Reinforce Learnings!

Podcast has been a fascinating medium for me to learn from in the last two years. It provides an opportunity to learn while doing mundane routine work like walking or driving to work. It ensures I can stay in the gym for the bare minimum time. It is amazing times we live in where we can learn from the very best of best so easily. Podcasts like Tim Ferris show are a boon to today's digital generation as they struggle through life for not physical needs like food and shelter but more importantly for peace of mind.

However, while I hope I am absorbing the learnings, that is probably not the case most of the time. I feel I consume a lot but not applying the learnings as much as I should. In fact, not even close.

That is where I feel blogging can be very helpful. Discussing my thoughts with my wife or a friend is important and definitely allows me a platform to discuss my learnings and strengthen the related neural connections in my own brain. However, many a times, they stay in my head and just leak out over time without any useful application. That is where writing can put the screws on those leaks so the learnings stay with me and be applied as necessary.

Secondly, writing would enable me to develop the very important skill of 'observation'. That is one skill I definitely need to strengthen. Starting today, I will write one post a day whether as short as one sentence. It could be about anything I observed during the day - about myself or a friend or family member or the weather or the suitcase.

That reminds of the observation exercise I performed a couple of days back. Lying on the bed - I saw the lamp and a suitcase and I had the make a connection. I started thinking of how a lamp can be inside a suitcase for example. I continued to push and thought of 'what if' we could leverage the energy of the rolling wheels of a suitcase? Like for example, having a battery attached to it that gets recharged and a small USB port next to it that enables us to charge our electronic devices such as mobiles and laptops. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Now, the learning here for me is not the idea itself, but the fact that a good idea does not come in the first thought itself. You have to push yourself and let the neural nerves make the relevant connections. It does not happen instantaneously in most cases. That is where the skill of prototyping or experimentation is so critical. You have to learn from your mistakes and you do that by letting yourself make mistakes. Generate random ideas - put them out there. They will eventually get better.

Perspective!

INSEAD just got #1 ranking two years in a row by Financial Times. There were celebrations and after we all had a glass of champagne and cupcake in the 15 minutes of break that most of us had, we all got back to business.

Rankings are a matter of perspective and highly subjective. It is who plays the game better. Most schools understand this, but at the end of the day, frankly - I would like to believe that such rankings, at the very least, improve INSEAD's brand awareness amongst not just future applicants but also future employers. Secondly, INSEAD mission and actions do represent a world I would like to live in where nationalities do not seem to matter. We can interact and discuss global issues across people from all over the world in this unique melting pot.

INSEAD and its tagline as the business school for the world is especially important in the times we live in today where a wave of protectionism is spreading in the developed world. I believe we all need to get together on a common ground to discuss and debate like we do here at INSEAD. I would be the first one to say INSEAD is not perfect. It does mostly have people who have had the better of circumstances, and better opportunities in their lives. But it is a start nevertheless in the right direction!