Inner Peace is the new success !

I didn’t know Mr Siddhartha of Cafe coffee day group personally, nor did most of you who may be reading this . But as a entrepreneur and a businessman I am surely saddened by the way he took his life. I admired him for his diverse business models and entrepreneurial zeal from what I saw and what I read. He shouldn’t have gone the way he did.

Over the next few days there will be enough scrutiny of his businesses, his public and private life , his finances and balance sheets on social platforms in the media and newspapers, and perhaps even in most drawing rooms etc; but most of this coverage will very conveniently ignore the humane aspect of his death.

I was reading a few newspapers today. Most of them have many articles on Coffee day and its success story, how Siddhartha founded Cafe Coffee Day expanded from a home side coffee estate to a international coffee chain, how they diversified in different businesses from Finance to Hospitality to Logistics.

There were people who have proudly expressed knowing him, dealing with him. Other who believe the system failed him. There are stalwarts who have expressed shock that how he has gone too soon, a black letter day for modern businesses, how people are perturbed about the extreme step he took; However none of the articles or reports spoke about the stress and depression he may have faced and the ways to deal with it when your business or life is not doing well.

What extremities could have compelled Siddhartha, a seemingly successful entrepreneur, from country’s the leading political families, highly networked and well connected, level headed individual, who had much more positives in his networth than his combined liabilities, to take his own life in a undesirable form. How do you deal with stress and depression once you are successful and in constant media glare?

What makes a businessman crumple so much under pressure that he chooses to do the most extreme thing possible ? How should he have dealt with this , how would any of us deal with it if it were us? These are some questions we need to ask today.

The fact also remains that after a certain level the money doesn’t matter . Once you earn a few crores a year your lifestyle remains more or less same thereafter. Beyond a certain a phase the company topline or turnover or bottom line doesn’t matter. Perhaps it’s then about power play and market positions. It’s more about the zeal to achieve more and create more and capitalise more , at what cost and what price is the question we fail to answer for ourselves.

Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden and perhaps it’s in such extreme gloom that one decides to take such steps. Depression is real and we need to learn to deal with it l. Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.

Like the business schools and management courses, prepare us for success, teach us how to excel in life, teach us finer aspects of the trade. Likewise it should be mandatory for them to teach how to deal with business and personal failures, how to stay resilient, how not to give up in situations when adversity sinks in. How to maintain positivity and hope when nothing seems to be working in your favour. We need to learn how to say – “I Battle Depression rather than saying I Suffer with Depression”

I hope we all can learn to say I’m not OK . I hope we can admit that it’s all right to not being tough , and that even non tough people last beyond tough times . We learn to identify our failures and deal with it. We realize that how so ever gloomy the day may be, there will be a better tomorrow. That we learn about contentment, And that we define success differently. We truly embrace nonconformity.

It’s perhaps a proven philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly. Once you choose hope, anything is possible. I wish Siddhartha had chosen hope. I offer my prayers to his soul. As I write this I can only wish that Siddhartha finds peace wherever he may be and we don’t see another businessman ending life in situation such as this. May his soul rise in peace to merge with the universal creator.