If I could go back and change one thing about my professional journey, it would be this – I would worry less and live more.
For most of my life, I have been too caught up in the drama of success and failure. I have worried too much about the catastrophe that would befall me if I did not live up to expectations.
In Civil Services, I worried about what my seniors would think of my work. At McKinsey, I worried about how my career would end, if God forbid, one of my projects did not go well. In my startup journey, I worried about raising funds and doing the whole startup circus.
In retrospect, all that catastrophizing was pointless.
It is not that I don’t care about success – I very much do. But all my worrying came at a heavy price – not living life fully. I was too lost in the future to notice the present moment.
I have now realized that nothing is end of the world. Even if you make a career mistake, you can recover from it. But if we forget to live fully, there is no recovery possible.
The time that is gone is truly gone. We can only live it once.
– Rajan