15 work-life principles (by Sourajit Ghosh SG)

Celebrating a personal milestone today… my 15 years in SAP today…and the journey continues :-) I express my gratitude to this wonderful company, my peers and my family! I remain grateful and indebted to all my past and present managers, mentors, leaders, colleagues and friends in SAP and SAP eco-system who has helped me in this journey ahead! Thank you to all of you :-)

For a change instead of writing a long and boring whitepapers of mine :-).. I thought I will pay homage to someone who I admire and inspired by a lot by reading his books – Ray Dalio. As the legendary investor wrote in his book “Principles” – it is important one documents their own life principles and logic behind decision making and keeps evaluating their decision-making models; I thought I will document and also share with all of you my 15 work-life principles as a homage to the last 15 years of my career. This article is more for me than you... a reminder to me to keep showing up for work each day with the same beginner's mind and curiosity with these 15 work-life principles to guide me.

Hope you enjoy the same and share your thoughts and own principles in the comments below :-)

My 15 work-life principles

1.??????Learn to smile and enjoy life as-is… even if there is pain and suffering and crisis, even when you are crashing and burning, even when the going gets tough… smiling through crisis and loving life as-is is the best gift you can give yourself. Treat each new day as a new one … smile and move forward. And if possible, make others smile too around you :-) Your intrinsic smile is more than your career...

2.??????Reach out to the experts around you for help… acknowledging your own ignorance is the first step towards wisdom. Your arrogance, stubbornness, “know it all attitude” are your worst enemy. Your humility and willingness to learn and working hard to get better at what you do each day… are your best friends. Learn from experts in your company, experts who writes amazing books, experts who teaches courses somewhere. Get help proactively. Learn to learn from experts. Learn to say "I need help".

3.??????Have a north star 3-5 years ahead on where you want to take your career. Create your own career strategy. Document it. Being visionary helps especially when events are chaotic and stressful; your long term vision will help you navigate many storms.

4.??????Respect your time. Also respect other's time. Long term strategy is useless without a weekly and daily execution plan. And then execute on your plan. Don’t make castles in the air. Don’t live in your dreams inside your mind… make your dreams real in life. Use your time judiciously. Convert your passion, desires, thoughts, imaginations and feelings into meaningful actions every day. Your life will be grateful to you.

5.??????Don’t get influenced by what people’s opinions are about you or about life; your peers, leadership, friends, families, TV anchors, newspaper experts, competition, ChatGPT and even your Uber driver will have opinions about what you need to do with your life. Your own mind will play games and create stories too. Listen to all these voices of chaos with a pinch of salt :-) But above all listen to what pure silence is telling you :-) :-)

6.??????Take ownership. You mess up… don’t blame others … own up and look inwards always for self-improvement. Life messes up… don’t judge life… continue to look inwards. Someone else messes up... even then look inwards and keep working on your own self-improvement. It’s easy to keep complaining what others or life has done wrong to you. Very easy to judge life and people around you, very easy to get angry with life, situations, and people around you. All of these are useless… complete wastage of your precious time and mind energy. Just focus on what you can do to become a better version of yourself today than yesterday… and keep focusing on what you can do. It’s that simple. Take ownership of your own actions and focus on purely your own actions.

7.??????Be kind to your own self. Relax … life and your company will still exist if you don’t. So don’t make everything a big deal… be kind to yourself and learn to take it easy. You will make mistakes, you will take wrong decisions, you will mess up. That’s what it is of being a human :-) Don’t point fingers at yourself and neither blame others. Be gentle. Be kind and have empathy for your own self and move forward with optimism and insight. And above all take care of your physical & mental health :-)

8.??????Be curious and keep learning. You must keep upgrading your mind operating system :-) Run your own mind cloud upgrades periodically:-) :-) Every day is an opportunity to learn something new.

9.??????Make deep friendship at work… you are going to spend immense amount of time at work. Your workplace can be your extended family if you nurture your friendship with sincerity and selflessness

10.??Help others. Bring value to life of others. Genuinely ask others: “How can I help?” (to quote Dr. Max Goodwin from the TV series “New Amsterdam”. Feel for others. Life is beyond just your own personal success. Genuinely and selflessly help others. Trust me … it’s the purest form of joy and peace you will experience.

11.??Read books and do courses connected to your work. Read books and do courses outside your work … holistic diversified learning always helps and makes the mind more enriched

12.??Have a hobby and/or purpose outside work which makes life joyful. You need something to look forward to outside your work which adds meaning and/or joy and/or purpose in your life.

13.??Your brand is as good as your last deliverable - no matter how experienced you are. Don't bask in the glory of yesterday. Whether it’s an internal meeting, a customer meeting, an email you send, bump into someone at the cafeteria, meet a customer at an event, publish a whitepaper … give importance to smallest or biggest interaction of yours each day. Every day matters... every moment matters… every action matter… every word matters. YOU matter. So treat your own brand with utmost respect, care and love. But be careful… there is a subtle invisible line between being selfish and self-love; being a door-mat and being polite, being arrogant and being confident, being infamous and being appreciated, being obsessive and being passionate about yourself, bragging and sharing. So take care of yourself … but don’t take your own self too seriously :-)

14.??Be grateful and always give your family the utmost focus in your life... more than your work. Do your best to bring love, joy and peace in your family’s life. Your family is priceless.

15.??Meditate and let go.

Personal Disclaimer: The content expressed in this publication is purely the personal opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of organization the author works for.?