Care for others by first caring for YOURSELF

All of us look forward to balancing many priorities in life every day, which starts from our personal relationships, career goals and most importantly balanced health in chasing these priorities. I have tried to put few of my learnings in my pursuit to achieve this equilibrium. As leaders & individuals, we need to help other’s and support the entire eco-system, but much before that “SELF CARE” is the key to live a balanced life.

Hard Work is important but not helpful when overdone

 from the beginning of our lives, we have been taught by our parents and seniors, work hard and have good intent, results will follow. This is quite true and works well, till you hit a rock and cross the limits. No one else can define those limits, only your own body will give you signal, and you must balance. Listening to oneself is critical, else inadvertently one would move in a high stress zone and that would dampen overall productivity as well as one’s own rhythm.

Prioritize Health

There’s no point of achieving your goals and having your health deteriorating every day. Good health is a phenomenon of everyday efforts, and one must take out time for health, no matter how busy you are, put your health on your schedule along with other obligations.

Create good environment around you

It is very important to create healthy environment around you, by which I mean spending the day on productive things based on advanced planning. Taking help from those who have the right experience and relevance to your challenge is always helpful. Just worrying about your current challenge won’t help. You have to make choices and depend on good people around you. Try to avoid negative people, especially those for whom world is always to an end. Trust your people and give them free hand to be on their own.

Learn More

The key to balance your productivity and creativity is “Learn More” principle. When you continue putting hard work in a certain direction and do not sharpen your axe, it drains your energy. The world is changing at hyper speed, each one of us need to learn more else it would be very difficult to take strategic decisions. There are numerous ways to learn more, whether you can choose to read a good book or speak to someone who is doing something different than what you do.

Family time

 I have always prioritized my family over the years. Your biggest strength and support is your family, even when no one else is there for you at times. Over the years, I have hardly missed my both daughter’s PTM’s. I may have done nothing much in those PTM’s during my visit’s to their school but being there and knowing how they are doing is a great joy.

Once we are able to take care of self, we take the second step towards taking care of our team members, family and friends.

Thank you!

Best,

Pankaj Gupta