
Seven years ago, I hit rock bottom.
A run of bad luck, a juvenile temper tantrum, a magnified sense of injustice, a failed experiment in switching careers, a betrayal of epic proportions.
My twenty-fourth year on Earth provided enough drama to send Shakespeare into a tizzy. Jane Austen could have spun off a ‘Pride and Prejudice for Young Professionals.’ Hell, even James Horner would have been moved to write me my very own iceberg-struck score.
But when my tear glands finally gave up, the adrenaline and noradrenaline took over, I was angry. I was hurt. And I took a good hard look at myself in the mirror.
This is the story of how I found the courage to stop caring about how people saw me and started to become my own person.
Five months after being convinced by the founder to join an up-and-coming startup, I sat down for coffee with his favorite minion. I’d recently moved cities on a week’s notice (hello, startup life), was hunting for a lovely hipster apartment, and has just closed a fantastic deal. As I sipped my latte in a crowded Bombay cafe, I happily nodded as he talked about my enthusiasm, my drive, my loyalty, my diligence and my positivity.
He then proceeded to tell me that I was terrible at math, overly emotional, socially awkward, and unable to work in teams or to build strong relationships. Therefore, things wouldn’t work out. He was also really sorry that I had been made to move cross-country only weeks ago, and that today was my boyfriend’s birthday — but it was what it was.
I remember the pouring rain on the taxi ride home. I remember bawling into my midnight mojitos (happy birthday, boyfriend). I remember the battered hurt to my 24- year old ego.
But most of all, I remember how that conversation triggered a quarter-life existential crisis that won me ‘Moron of the Century.’
You see, it’s like this.
I really do hate math. I really do have a terrible poker face. I really could do better at filtering the flow of communication between my brain and my mouth.
But people? People are my thing. I can chat up a five-thousand-year-old fossil. I work hard and take every hit I can for my team. I’m chief travel-planner and account-keeper and dinner-orderer. I’m the marriage-witness at 3 AM, and the crazy voice of reason in a family that rules the world of crazy. I have a stable, loving relationship. I have the best kind of friends — the ones that are loyal, and kind, and ambitious. The ones that go for weeks without talking, but send me ridiculously cute videos on a daily basis of my favorite god-daughter asking about me for no reason at all.
If I don’t have my people, I have nothing.
But I sat there, and let Minion #1 tell me my whole life — personal and professional — had been a lie, because I had no skills in the one area that I had considered my strongest suit; the one core principle and strength and asset that had made my life worth living.
For the next six months, I torpedoed into a downward spiral that had me looking at every single relationship with a giant dollop of cynicism and negativity. In my mind, I became the pity pickup and charity case to my childhood friends, my colleagues, my parents, my sister, and my boyfriend of five years. Why would anyone want to hang out with me?
I convinced myself that I was a shameless huckster who had lucked into the best schools, a top college, and a fabulous first job. I magnified every small gaffe and social slight into being the very foundations of my identity and obliterated every honor and achievement I had ever earned. I became the award-winning case study on ‘imposter syndrome.’
I spent months believing that it was entirely my incompetence at relationships that had my ex-boss conning me into endless 75 hour weeks without reward, subjecting me to his most effective game of negative motivation, and ultimately bestowing on me the singular honor of being fired by his most favored minion.
I began to believe I deserved it.
I became my own worst detractor
Until my family and friends bullied me into applying for business school.
The worst thing about business school is the essays. I hated those essays.
The outstanding ones force you to look back at every school report and college election and work trip and lunch break. To analyze and summarize and verbalize why you prefer chocolate to carrots, books to movies, and Obama to Trump. (The answer if you’re wondering is — because!)
They force you to really think about the people in your life that you can count on, the ones you’ll die fighting for, and the ones that deserve zero mental space.
They make you sketch out that corner office — or the cabana on the beach. The power or the money. The applause and bright lights, or the backstage satisfaction of a job well done.
But most importantly, those essays make you think back to every word of praise and criticism you’ve ever received in your life. You revisit each conversation and consider, with less heat and more objectivity, the motivations of the people uttering those words, and your own reactions to them. You smile at the happy parts. You dream up the smartest retorts in wishful hindsight. You smack yourself for emotional outbursts. And you finally have the chance to consider objectively the judgments that were passed on you because you refused to act in a manner that ran contrary to your natural inclinations and basic moral code.
It was when I was revisiting the hardest conversations in my life, that my painful but necessary journey to self-love began.
As I wrote those essays and pondered over the events of the last year, my roller coaster emotional journey began to come into focus. I realized that I had fallen prey to a classic case of victim blaming. I had internalized and focused my energy on all of my purported mistakes, giving no credit to my strengths — and paying no heed to the cowardice of a man who couldn’t even fire me in person.
Feedback is an amazing gift. I love feedback because it helps me grow and become a better person each day. But it is absolutely critical to evaluate feedback in the light of who it’s coming from. Everyone has an opinion on who you should be, and what you can work on. But if you’ve never made an enemy, or actively invited the ire of people, you’ve never really stood for anything worthwhile (unless you’re Sundar Pichai. Everyone loves Sundar Pichai).
Only you can differentiate between changing yourself for the lure of being universally liked, or because it’s genuinely a step towards becoming a better, more well-rounded person.
In this case, my villain and his minion cost me two things — my infinitely precious self-respect and my utterly worthless ego. I am grateful to them for both.
I let their petty judgment momentarily define who I was. And I learned a valuable lesson about myself — that I can never trade my self-respect for likeability. To be truly happy, I need to remain objective about my natural strengths and failings. I can strengthen the former and work on improving the latter. But together, they make me who I am, and I will not apologize for being me.
Being accepted to business school was the first step towards the recovery of my lost self-esteem. I pushed myself into every possible social situation — comfortable or not. I taught myself to navigate complex group dynamics and to stand up for myself. I dared to run for student elections — an act that would have terrified me only a year earlier. I sought courses on psychological honesty, effective communication, authentic leadership and behavioral science. And I worked my way to a kick-ass job post school. Writing about this journey is the final, cathartic step to closing this chapter of my life.
I fought to win back my self-respect, and to love myself, and I won.
Then there was the small matter of my bruised ego. Five years on, I’m more grounded and less likely to strut my success. But I did dance a cheeky jig when said villain was called out on the internet for his toxic company culture, for his lack of people skills and for being an arrogant a**. And I might have done a sarcastic dance when he slurred out a half-baked apology three years later. Not my most dignified moment, but it’s a failing I’ll willingly own up to.
In hindsight, it was the perfect age to stumble and fall. To make mistakes and to pay for them. The truth set me free. And I’m happier than I’ve ever been. On my own terms. In my own way. Because I deserve it.
