Whats does Success mean to you ?

What does success mean to you?

Many years ago, being graduated as a Computer Engineer and working in one of the prestigious organizations in the R&D team then, I resigned and took a break.

I became a professional photographer, and I felt successful there too.

Then, for personal reasons, I had to return to IT after a 4-year gap.

It was quite challenging at that time for me,

I was failing interviews,

I had lost confidence in my coding

And every time I opened LinkedIn, I saw everyone else growing in their careers, while I did not even have a job.

Eventually I joined a large organization and started working in Big Data in 2012. That was the beginning of the path that led me into AI and LLM architecture years later.

When I joined back IT, I was quite surprised to see that my break, and choosing a unique career path, had given me a vast perspective, maturity, where people continued to grow in a vertical path of role-based progression. I also noticed that I was so assertive, could talk to people at all levels irrespective of hierarchy. My short varied, experience had made me more mature and more fulfilled.

Since then, success for me has been Fulfillment.

My Career has been my own navigation, with 0 competition with anyone else.

It is purely,

where I want to be,

how I want to be

what I want to contribute.

I have made multiple decisions to choose a challenging path over a straight or seemingly easier one, inclined towards a deeper experience, that can make me more mature.

Over time I have learnt to be PRESENT - Here and Now. 21 years of inner exploration does teach you that, and it turns out presence is not separate from leadership. It is the foundation of it.

And I feel super successful in life, because I can enjoy everything that I have.

Time with my loved ones, friends, health, wealth, abundance, work, meetings, challenges, AI, art, you name it. If it is in my life, I have chosen it and I am loving it with all my heart.

It has not been easy to be here feeling this way, and I had to choose the paths less trodden, multiple times, but it is so worth it.

This is success for me.

The definition of success for me is completely different from what the society or the systems train us for.

What does success mean for you?