“The Greatest Gift You Can Get Is To Be Uncomfortable” : Rakesh Dewan On His Book

“Karma is created by the way you think, do and imagine. If these are changing, your karma is changing. Karma follows its own course and it’s not a fixed thing.” This was said by Rakesh Dewan, author of the book “Take the Chance, Don’t Say No If you can say yes.” 

Starting with talking about his book, Dewan said that there was no Eureka moment to write the book. “The book title itself provides the answer on how the book came. The key to this book was that I have been holding a lot of workshops on personal effectiveness and leadership and I discovered that people are uni-focused when it comes to life. In fact, the title came much before the book because that’s a philosophy I strongly believe in. Between the two words YES and NO lies the entire philosophy,” Dewan said. 

He further spoke about how being uncomfortable can help a person grow. “The greatest gift you can get is to be uncomfortable. If you are out of your comfort zone, you are out of a prison. Feeling uncomfortable is the biggest perk for moving on and you really grow with it,” said Dewan. 

Citing his personal examples, Dewan said that he has said yes to failures and adversity, fully understanding the results. “I suffered a major tragedy in professional life when one of our plants suffered a major accident. I said to my team that in three days I want the plant to be functional. I changed my team’s outlook at that moment. And the net result for that change was that month turned out to be the highest production month in the history of my company,” Dewan recalled. 

He concluded by saying that one cannot preserve success and must constantly work at it. “When one says yes, one is saying yes to innovation as yet. Anyone who feels I must preserve my success, it cannot happen,” Dewan mentioned.