How I Got Hired

136: Sonalogues & Career Lessons from Diwali

• Sonal Bahl • Episode 136

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In this enlightening episode of the How I Got Hired podcast, I explore the valuable career lessons inspired by the vibrant festival of Diwali. Listeners will discover how the themes of light, renewal, and community during Diwali can inform and transform their professional journeys. Join me as I share my meditations on what Diwali can teach us for our professional success!
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Speaker 1:

Hey there, welcome to the how I Got Hired podcast. I'm your host, sonal Behl, former HR director and founder of Supercharge, and I have had an insane corporate career that started out in India and moved to South America and then to Europe, often working only in Spanish and French, which I had to learn there from scratch. Why do I call my career insane? Hey there, welcome to the how I Got Hired podcast. I'm your host, sonal Behl, former HR director and founder of Supercharge, and I have had an insane corporate career that started out in India, then moved to South America and then to Europe, often working only in Spanish or French, which I had to learn there from scratch. Now, why do I call my career insane? Because while I've experienced complete highs, like working across geographies and industries, while navigating challenges like needing visa sponsorships, zero network locally during recessions, and often while being a new mom to one of my two kids, I have seen career heartbreak and multiple layoffs, as well. As a career strategist, I strongly believe that a fulfilling career is a birthright and not a privilege for the lucky few who have access to prestigious education, capital and networks. And now I am on a mission to democratize access to high value career advice by designing affordable digital courses, with my YouTube channel and this podcast right here, where we learn together from ordinary people like you and me and how they created extraordinary career success. I hope this episode reminds you that if they could do it, you can do it too. Now get ready to get supercharged, let's go. Hey, welcome back. So it's been a couple of years. I don't know if you've noticed, uh, one of these episodes where it's just me, it's solo episode. I used to call these sonologues anybody here who remember my sonal monologues? Hence the word sonologues and, as you can see from the title, today, and given that we are publishing this during the week of Diwali, which is the Indian festival of lights, I wanted to talk about career lessons that we can apply directly from Diwali and break these lessons down, and no matter what stage you're in in your career and in your life. So, without further ado, let's go.

Speaker 1:

This is a little bit special, but it's a little bit different, because what I wanted to do was look at Diwali and, obviously, firstly, I wanted to wish happy Diwali to all my Indian friends. Whether're from India, living in India, doesn't really matter. Hope you had a lovely Diwali, wish you lots of health, wealth and happiness. That's what I was saying when you said I couldn't be heard. Hope lots of great things come your way, and what I wanted to do today was irrespective of the faith that you follow, irrespective of what you do in your career because we all have a career we all have a purpose, right?

Speaker 1:

The idea today was to see some of the universal concepts that come from the festival of Diwali and how we can apply them to our own career. I wanted to do a little take on it and I found a fantastic article. If you want to get more into more detail, I will link that article as well for you in the show notes. Thank you so much for tuning in Love that you guys are here. Very happy Diwali, good. So let's get cracking. I've got about half an hour and then we have to go out with the family.

Speaker 1:

All right, the first lesson that I think is very universal, that comes from Diwali, that I think you can apply to your own career, is that the concept of wealth creation, the concept of acquiring wealth, is a good thing. That is something that is highly encouraged, especially during the you know, all my Indian friends will know around October, november, right? However, we also get to hear about the corrupting nature of wealth. You know what I mean and how you need to be a good person person and I get that but at the same time, I've been harping on you know, for example, salary negotiation, which is your own way of wealth creation when you are in employment. I've been harping on that for years here, and the reason is when you do good work, I think wealth comes towards you. So today will be a little bit like a soapbox, it will be a little bit like a TED Talk, but I wanted to stress this because I don't think wealth creation is the aim. I think wealth creation is the reward. So when you do good work and you work hard and you do it with a pure heart, wealth comes your way.

Speaker 1:

But please don't be fooled by people who say that wealth is not important. The goddess of wealth and abundance is Lakshmi, in my faith, and everyone welcomes Lakshmi, and we talk about lights, and I'm going to talk about lights in my next few points. But it's not the goal, it's the outcome, if you know what I mean. It's the result from the good that you do so and that's a good thing. That's a good thing, and anyone who tells you that wealth can corrupt you. They're coming from their own place of scarcity. They are people who've never really had wealth right. You look around you. You see people who have fine, and I'm here I'm talking about specifically financial wealth. When you look around and you see people who have financial wealth, they never take it for granted, they know it's something that can come and go and they respect it right.

Speaker 1:

So don't forget every now and then, to get in touch with the psychology of money, because you have certain, we all have certain beliefs around money from childhood, and they come from our parents, they come from friends, they come from everything that we've learned over the years, and the psychology of money is very real and it has a huge impact on our earning power today. Let me know if you agree, let me know what you think about this in the comments, and if you have anything further to add, I'd love to read all about it. So, all right, lots of Diwali wishes. You're very kind. Appreciate you guys hanging out. Yeah, gee, it's a lot to do with karma, and I don't think karma is something that is, you know, only exclusive to Hinduism or anything like that, because a lot of people think karma is religion. At the end of the day, there's so many other religions that talk about the same thing. You know, absolutely understand that. So let me know what you think about this.

Speaker 1:

That wealth creation and acquiring wealth and being financially comfortable. I know that this is something in the West we're like duh, you're like, of course it is, but for a lot of us coming from other cultures, it's something that needs a bit of a mindset shift. So riches can be good, health creation can be good. Lesson number two you can have the most beautiful house on the valley, lit up with the best possible lights, but your heart is dark and your heart is in a sad place or a bad place. It won't really matter and it won't really impact your inner light Because, at the end of the day, what are we all right?

Speaker 1:

We're a little ball of energy. We come here out of the blue. It's totally random, one in a trillion chances of just being alive. We spend what is it? 70, 80, 80, 90 years in the millennium, in the millions of years that the earth has been here, and then we go. That's it. It's so random.

Speaker 1:

So that little ball of light, that little ball of energy, is all there is, and that's light, and that's our inner light Right, so we can have all those lights lights outside on diwali, and you have those on christmas, you have those on so many other you know occasions, um, on in different faiths, in different religions. It's great to have them and they need to point at the inner light and that needs to continue to burn, because when the inner light stops burning, that is when we have those extremely strong feelings of depression, loneliness and, particularly for all of you who are in the northern hemisphere, our days are getting shorter, our nights are getting longer. There is a very serious impact for some of us who are more sensitive to it, and it's like you know, um, in worst case scenarios, suicide rates go up as well. Right? So the best possible way to have that inner light continue to shine bright is to help others. That's it. No matter what you're doing. You're showing up, I'm showing up, I'm on holiday, I want to do other things, but this gives me joy. I'm not just doing this for you, I'm doing this for me, because it gives me this adrenaline high. So the the outer light is lovely, especially on Diwali, the dark days of Diwali that follow, but the inner light is the one that continues to, needs to continue to burn. I know I sound a bit preachy today, but when we have that inner light, how we show up at our work and how we show up at interviews, you can I mean g is an hr person, she knows when someone shows up and you're like not only are they prepared, not only did they do their homework, but they have something extra and that is energy. We know this, guys, you see this with friends. They're like something is wrong, there's something about her. Yeah, yeah, it's the energy, it's that light, and when that light is missing, that needs a spark, and that is something we need to do to help each other on. That's lesson number two.

Speaker 1:

When it comes to career lessons from Diwali, what do you think? Number three let's talk about the third one, and that is you've got to believe and here the the operative word is believe. You've got to believe that good triumphs over evil, because that is the whole premise of diwali. You have lord ram, who's a king. I'm simplifying it. My indian friends are going to be like oh, what is she saying? I'm simplifying, I'm simplifying it, oversimplifying it. You have a good king. You have another king who was supposedly very good and extremely intelligent. He had the intelligence of 10 people in one head. That's why you see Ravan. You see Ravan with 10 heads. But stuff happened and he wasn't that good anymore, right? So then he became the bad guy. So you have good triumph over evil. It took years to do that. The king lost 14 years of his life, but he made it work. Point is, the hope was never lost, right? And the king returned back home and that's why we have Diwali and we have candles and we have lights, and that happened to be a night without moon, but everything was lit up because of all the candles and all the lights, which is why Diwali is always 19 days after this era, and that is the day when you have no moon.

Speaker 1:

The thing is, the evil doesn't always have to be evil outside. It can be. A lot of people will say social media is evil. Social media is corrupting. Just like we said in point number one, wealth is corrupting. Um, you have trolls. You have people who are constantly bringing others down, um, so you're like I'm not gonna do it. You have that. That's evil. Yes, different versions of evil, right, I think it's a sliding scale. But you also have evil within anger, envy, um, jealousy, mistrust, cynicism. There's no point trying. The hiring manager is useless. They don't know what they want. I'm rejected because those people don't understand my value. So that cynicism, firstly, it's so difficult to live with. It's so difficult to live with. But point is, you can triumph over that if you choose to do so. And people who do that tend to have a much more successful career. You know what I mean. They are the ones who tend to get promoted, they are the ones who are recognized a lot more and are sent to different assignments abroad, etc.

Speaker 1:

That hope and that faith that if things are not looking up, things are not looking great, that's okay. That hope that the good inside other people, the good inside you, will triumph over it. I know it's over, like I said, oversimplifying, but at the end of the day, that hope is everything in humanity. But at the end of the day, that hope is everything in humanity and we don't have that hope anymore, life just becomes a little bit sad and long to live in. You know what I mean. So fantastic, all right. Number four this is also true in so many other religions.

Speaker 1:

Gifts are a big thing on Diwali right, and I'm talking material gifts. Yes, they're a big deal. There'll be sweets, there'll be salty gifts, there'll be I don't know a car. Somebody gets a house. There's all types of gifts. But I want you to think about something small you've done lately for someone and or something small that someone did for you, but you still remember that. Think what that was and how can you do that? If you appreciate someone and someone's been showing up for you, particularly when times have been hard, you don't necessarily have to go and spend a lot of money. A simple thing on LinkedIn is and I talked about it last week is surprise someone, surprise someone recommend them on LinkedIn, endorse them, endorse their skills. Those little things mean a lot and they get a notification that someone did that and they'll say, hey, that's so sweet, I didn't expect it. Those are great surprises.

Speaker 1:

I know that Christmas and Diwali are all about gifts. They've become such a commercial thing now but they don't always have to be about the same material gifts and comparing and what size that person. You know what gift they got and, let's face it, a lot of gifts aren't that great. A lot of gifts we end up recycling. Am I I right? Am I right? Am I right, you'll get like dry fruit and you'll be like, okay, this is the 16th box of dry fruit, I'm going to pass it to that. Oh, come on, that's not the point. The gift is supposed to bring joy. It's not necessarily all about a circular economy when it comes to Diwali gifts, you know. So think about those little gifts, and Diwali is a lot about those gifts, and it don't have to be about big gifts either. There's so many ways to show your love and gratitude towards someone.

Speaker 1:

Number five we are more alike than we realize. People talk about diversity, higher diversity, inclusion. Yeah, of course that's important, but we need to tap into how alike we are. For example, as a job seeker, we approach the company as this thing it's actually a person who's going to interview us. They're not that different from us. They have day-to-day problems. They have a particular reason. They are looking for someone to fill that role. You have a problem, you need something done. You want your insurance done, you need your car fixed. It's not that different. You're looking for someone who can solve your problem. They are looking for someone who can solve their problem. So that's one silly little way you can talk about how alike we are.

Speaker 1:

The other thing is, when we start working in a company, we have so much unconscious bias, right, we don't even realize it. We're like we don't know we're doing this, but we're putting people in boxes. Oh, this is the cool gang here. Okay, they sit at that lunch table. This is the gang that looks like a bunch of nerds, you know, just like we did in high school, right? Uh, this is a gang I think I can hang out with. We don't know we're doing it, but we're doing it. There's a lot more in common than we realize.

Speaker 1:

So go out there. What does this mean? Go out there and talk to people who are different, who you think are different from you. They're not that different. They're struggling through some things that you're probably struggling through as well. It's just our assumptions that, yeah, they look different, they talk different, they dress completely different, they smell different. I don't know what they're eating. Actually, the humanity side of things just mushes it all together and it just blends together very beautifully.

Speaker 1:

So, whether you're following, you know, whether you, you, you celebrate diwali or hanukkah or christmas or I don't know, eid, anything. Um, it's, you know, the the parsi new year. Um, people are people and um, um, I get a lot of questions on oh you know, different cultures and what was it like working in Latin America? And how different is it from India? Or how is France different from Uruguay or Belgium? My first thing when I, every single time, I answer is like, actually, there's more things in common than there are differences the universality. I think that's a strength, if you can see it that way. I think that's a strength. I I seriously believe that.

Speaker 1:

What do you think career lessons from diwali? I said I would say three and I started off with three, but I ended up doing five. We are just going to do a quick recap. Riches and wealth creation is good. However, keep in mind they are the outcome or the byproduct, not the aim of your career or your business. Outer lights that we have on diwali, they need to point to the inner lights and help them burn. Continue to burn as long as we are alive. Right, and obviously I talked a lot more in how it impacts your career the good that triumphs over evil. You've got to believe, sincerely believe that it's possible.

Speaker 1:

Small gifts, particularly small gifts and unexpected gifts, I think, are a great way to show your love and gratitude towards someone, and and festivals are an excuse to do that, but I'm also going to go out on a limb and say you don't have to wait for Diwali or Christmas to show your love and gratitude, right, and you don't have to wait for their birthday. It could be any occasion. You've always got a choice and there's so much universality and faiths around the world in people at your workplace, the boss, all those boxes, all those sort of cliches, and we typecast them. There's a lot more in common. All right, this was the little diwali special. Thank you so much for tuning in. Um, lovely to have you here again. Uh, very happy diwali to all my peeps in india and from india and wherever you are in the world. You have indian friends. I'm sure we're lovely people, so I'm sure you you know to some extent or the other know a little bit about diwali.

Speaker 1:

These were three to five career lessons from the festival of diwali that I shared and um, thank you. Uh, happy diwali everyone. Take care of yourselves, take care of your family, watch out for that. That was my favorite lesson of all the ones. Keep your inner light burning and see you Bye. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this Diwali episode and how it connects to your careers. I hope you've enjoyed it and, if you did, make sure you follow this podcast, make sure you click on the follow button on the podcast app that you listen this on and share this with a friend who you think would benefit. Doesn't have to be an Indian friend, right? The principles behind Diwali are universal. All right, take care of yourselves and I'll be with you next time. Bye for now.