How will I live my life?

Its 3 am and I am at my desk. I had been tossing and turning for an hour so decided to write instead of thinking. Yesterday was a tough day in many ways. I spent my day sitting in a bull shit meeting witnessing power play and sheer arrogance of people. I came home and got a call that a friend lost her husband and left a 2-year-old child behind. Days like this make me question the meaning of life and I end up asking myself on how I want to live mine. Struggling with lack of motivation and mom guilt I decided to write a letter to myself.

You can change the world: My 7 year old has one goal in life and it is to change the world. Make it slightly better than he found it. He raised $75 for Stop Hunger Now when he was 6 years old by setting up a baked goods stand. The look of excitement in his face when someone would stop by to buy something from him inspires me to keep moving on difficult days. His pure un-adulterated dream to help others is like a breeze of fresh air to my tired mind. I choose to believe that I can change the world, if not by much then a little bit. It could be by inspiring people or helping them or working on disruptive technology. I choose to do my part and believe that I too can and will change the world bit by bit.

Question the bullshit: My default behavior is that of shyness. I have spent many meetings with my mind whirring with great ideas but not speaking them. I always believed that other people in the room were smarter than me and had been doing this much longer than me. The 25-year-old veterans who know how the system works and the 30-year-old veterans who know almost everyone. Most of the times the decisions were made by the loudest voice and not by the most reasonable ones. As I saw quite a few project stories unfold, I decided to question it. I started questioning every assumption, every statement, and every idea that did not make sense, even at the risk of sounding foolish, I started raising my hand. I choose to be a thinker of thoughts and asking the obvious.

Keep Moving: There are days that will be hard. Days when you have important meetings to attend and tired little hands dealing with an ear infection and a cold. Days when you will have to keep the baby in a back pack and be on calls all day. There will be days when you will be taking the calls while changing a diaper or be the only one in a fancy steak house customer dinner with a tiny baby. Days when you will fly your entire family across the country to attend a conference just so that you can nurse the baby. On those days even when you want to stop, don’t, just keep moving. These are stories of courage and they will make you stronger. I choose to keep moving.

Just remember love a little more, live a little more and dream a little more and you will be ok.