Without a Doubt: How to Go from Underrated to Unbeatable by Surbhi Sarna

Author:Surbhi Sarna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2023-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

6 Shit Happens

Keep Going Through Life’s Ups and Downs

Falling to the floor is a recurrent theme in this story, and here I was, in June 2016, on the cold tile floor of my Chicago hotel room, crying. With everything I had been through and all of the rejection I faced, I had yet to shed any tears in front of anyone. Yet, I was now bawling my eyes out to a professional investor—the one who had put the most money in our company.

Darshana patiently listened on the other end of the phone, talking me through the details of what was making me so upset. How could a Series B fundraise make me so emotional? Yes, the deal terms were terrible and came as a surprise, but something else seemed to be going on. In fact, I wasn’t just stressed—it was hormones. I was pregnant, I just didn’t know it yet.

Raj and I had begun discussing starting a family, and we wanted a baby. But now? Right in the middle of one of the most critical deals of the company’s life? We were about to close a hard-earned financing of $12 million, one that I didn’t want to jeopardize. I couldn’t believe that I was pregnant. (I mean this literally. I didn’t believe the + on the first test so I ran down the three flights of stairs of our apartment building to return to Safeway and buy more tests to confirm it.)

Sometimes bad shit happens that’s troubling and distracting, and sometimes good shit happens that’s equally distracting but wonderful, like expecting a child. “Work-life balance” is a misnomer, implying they should be given equal weight, with a “balance” between the two. Instead, work is just a part of life. When trying to give equal attention to everything, you can miss prioritizing another thing that’s important—you. It’s easy to forget about your own health, both physical and mental, when trying to keep all of the balls in the air. If you’ve had to face down doubters your entire life, getting those balls into the air in the first place is even harder. What are you supposed to do now? Let them all fall to the ground so that you can sleep more or have a little time to yourself? The more you feel you have to prove, the more likely you are to make decisions that may seem impressive and ambitious in the moment but can be self-sabotaging in the long run. I learned the hard way and made a fair share of mistakes in this department.

If you’re working on building something that satisfies a good indignation, you often will try to make it all work and push everything forward, like I did. But you have to be okay with the fact that most likely, something unplanned, something that commands your attention, is going to crop up somewhere. If you can be flexible and accept that there will be curve balls, you’ll be better prepared to handle them—and potentially let certain things go.

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