The Senior Director of Human Resources at Virtusa Sri Lanka offers invaluable advice on how to have it all.
You are your biggest cheerleader. I believe that everyone should dream of having it all, irrespective of your career. What ‘all’ is, however, is defined by you and you alone. Some of the basic qualities that I have cultivated and that have worked for me include perseverance, focus, commitment and above all, confidence in your own competence.
Work diligently. Nothing is a substitute for hard work and application. I learnt that by practice.
Deal with the glass ceiling in a logical manner. I believe the ‘glass ceiling’ is something that solidifies the more you dwell upon its existence. The moment you look beyond the glass and focus on your end goal, you stand a better chance of realizing it.
Don’t have regrets. Regret is the currency of lost opportunity. To regret is to dwell in the past. I have had many fleeting brushes with regret — too many to mention individually — but I have always made it a point to not be loaded with the emotional baggage that regret brings. Instead, I would rather focus on how to avoid a repetition of the incident.
Work and life don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Take work as a part of life. It is the attempt to delineate both that results in conflict. When one accepts that work is built-in and not bolted on to life, then one is in a better position to realize harmony and better understand the symbiosis that exists.
Be happy with where you are. Would I want to spend a lot more time with my growing daughters? Yes. Would I want to pursue some of my other talents? Yes. Yet, at the end of the day, being content in the here and now means I have probably not neglected or given up anything important to me.
This article was originally published as ‘How I Did It: Chandi Dharmaratne’ in the March 2016 issue of Cosmopolitan Sri Lanka. To read the whole article, subscribe now and get a free March issue.
