Mind without fear

You’re successful at work. You have spent years building the organization and you command a great deal of respect from your colleagues and friends. You have a formidable reputation which you have painstakingly built over the years. You have a clear roadmap ahead at work and a great team behind you. You keep gruelling work schedules and travel often on business. Yet you take time off few times a year to go on foreign vacations with your family. In short, you have it all going for you and life is great.

If you feel a lot of that describes who you are, brace yourself for what I am about to tell you – you are probably staying well within your comfort zone.

Talking of success, very few are able to reach the levels which Rajat Gupta reached. He was the first foreign-born chief executive of the prestigious consultancy firm McKinsey & Company. Gupta was a board member of marquee corporations such as Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble. He was an advisor to non-profits such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He is also the co-founder of several institutions, the likes of which include the Indian School of Business and American India Foundation.

In 2012, he was convicted for insider trading and sent to jail. Throughout his trial and imprisonment, he fought the charges and maintains his innocence to this day. Fast forward to 2019, he is out of jail and has written a book titled “Mind without fear’. In it, he tells his side of the story in the scandal that destroyed his career and reputation.

In an interview with CNBC, while talking about his jail time, I found it fascinating how instead of being bitter about the experience, he puts it so positively. He goes on to say that while he does not wish a similar experience for anybody, being in jail helped him get out of his comfort zone. Here is what he had to say -

“…I tell you I think in a funny way I threw my life taking myself out of my comfort zone, I mean whenever I got very comfortable I said go do something different this was forced where it was out of my comfort zone and it was an extraordinary learning experience…”

As they say, life begins at the end of our comfort zone. That’s where real learning happens. And for that to hold in even the most adverse conditions like being in jail, that’s truly remarkable. His memoir is not just a courtroom drama - it is an extraordinary story of grit, resilience and a positive mindset.