I was born and raised in India, an introverted child who thought deeply about the world. Like many others, I followed the “safe” path. I became an engineer. I built a successful 16-year career in tech. I relied on structure, planning, and logic.
But something was missing.
I felt a pull toward making a greater impact as far as I can remember. The safe path wasn’t enough.
First, I started two startups and then a social impact NGO in India. Later, I moved to the Netherlands. Finally, after 16 years of stability, I finally walked away from my high-paying job. I took a leap into the unknown to do what I do today.
There was no roadmap. No guarantees. Just a deep commitment to bringing people together and to bring meaning, joy and fulfilment back to workplaces.
The Discomfort of Saying “No”
The most challenging part of making a bold commitment is the willingness to eliminate everything that can’t grow exponentially with you—even if that means letting go of what brought you success so far. This creates significant discomfort that most people avoid.
When you say “no” to opportunities that once seemed valuable, you’ll feel the pain of potential loss. When you step away from projects that interested you but don’t serve your core focus, you’ll question your decision. When you distance yourself from relationships that drain rather than energize you, you’ll feel guilty. These uncomfortable feelings are natural and inevitable.
The discomfort comes from several sources:
- Fear of missing out: Each “no” feels like closing a door that might have led somewhere good.
- Identity confusion: Saying “no” to things you’ve always done challenges your sense of self.
- Social pressure: Others won’t understand your choices and may try to pull you back to your old ways.
- Uncertainty: The path of bold commitment doesn’t offer guarantees, while the familiar path feels safer.
Yet this discomfort is precisely what drives your growth.
Leaving my career wasn’t easy. It meant saying “no” to security. It meant disappointing current and past colleagues who didn’t understand. It meant facing my own fears of failure.
Every “no” felt uncomfortable. When I turned down consulting opportunities to focus on my coaching practice, my bank account suffered. When I declined social invitations to develop my methods, friendships were tested. When I set boundaries with clients who wanted the old way of leadership, I risked rejection.
Each “no” was painful. But each “no” was necessary.
I discovered something powerful in this discomfort. Each difficult “no” strengthened my commitment. Each uncomfortable choice clarified my vision. Each time I disappointed others to honor my deeper purpose, I became more authentic.
The discomfort didn’t just lead to better results. It transformed me.
Focusing on What Truly Matters
I became obsessed with understanding momentum. I studied what makes leaders grow fast versus stay stuck. I did deep inner work through silence, meditation, and coaching. I faced my fears head-on.
This obsessive focus required eliminating distractions. I couldn’t be everything to everyone anymore. I had to concentrate on what truly mattered: transforming leadership.
Within four years, I built a coaching practice that stood out. I began working with top entrepreneurs and CEOs, helping them scale beyond €100M. I ran transformational retreats and experiences for leadership teams – 1 in 2022, 2 in 2023 and 9 in 2024 alone. I had never done anything like that ever before.
None of this would have happened if I had kept saying “yes” to everything.
How Discomfort Transforms You
The discomfort of saying “no” doesn’t just lead to better results—it transforms you as a person. This transformation happens in several ways:
Increased self-awareness: When saying “no” is difficult, you’re forced to examine why. This examination reveals your fears, attachments, and hidden motivations.
Greater emotional resilience: Each time you face the discomfort of saying “no,” you build emotional muscles. The discomfort never disappears completely, but your capacity to bear it grows substantially.
Clearer values: Saying “no” requires knowing what you’re saying “yes” to. This process forces you to clarify what truly matters to you.
Authentic relationships: When you say “no” to activities and relationships that don’t align with your core focus, you create space for deeper connections with those who truly support your vision.
Increased confidence: Each time you make a difficult choice that honors your commitment, your confidence grows. You begin to trust yourself more deeply.
The person who left that engineering job is not the same person writing these words today. The transformation goes far beyond my professional achievements.
I developed greater self-awareness. Each difficult “no” forced me to examine my motives. Why was saying “no” so hard? What attachments were holding me back?
I built emotional resilience. The discomfort of disappointing others never disappeared completely. But my capacity to bear this discomfort grew substantially.
My values became clearer. Saying “no” required knowing what I was saying “yes” to. This process forced me to clarify what truly mattered to me.
My confidence grew. Each difficult choice that honored my commitment built trust in myself. I began making decisions more quickly and with greater conviction.
Pushing Beyond Comfort Zones
Today, I push leaders beyond their comfort zones. I challenge them to take bold, high-stakes action NOW.
I see myself in them. The hesitation. The attraction to the safe path. The fear of saying “no.” I recognize it because I’ve lived it.
When a CEO struggles to let go of a product line that’s holding their company back, when a founder hesitates to raise their prices, or when a leadership team clings to outdated processes, it all sounds so familiar today. Because I have been there. I know how that feels.
These stories resonate because they’re real. The discomfort is real. The transformation is real.
Why Bold Commitments Are Easier Than Small Improvements
Surprisingly, bold commitments are often easier to achieve than small improvements for several reasons:
Less Competition: When you aim for extraordinary results, you enter a space with fewer competitors. Everyone is fighting for small improvements, but few have the vision or courage to pursue bold exponential results.
Deeper Focus: Bold commitments require you to focus on very few things rather than many. Research shows that constantly switching tasks makes deep work and high performance nearly impossible. By eliminating distractions and focusing deeply, you can achieve breakthroughs that would be impossible with divided attention.
Creative Thinking: Bold commitments force you to think differently. You can’t achieve extraordinary results with ordinary thinking. This necessity drives innovation and creativity, leading to novel solutions that can leapfrog the competition.
Team Building: Bold commitments push you beyond what you can accomplish alone. They require building teams and systems that multiply your impact. This shift from doing everything yourself to leading others creates growth that small improvements rarely demand.
The Power of Being Different
This meant standing out. While other coaches offered incremental improvements, I focused on transformation. While others promised stress management, I delivered momentum and exponential business growth.
Being different wasn’t always comfortable. It meant challenging traditional leadership models that CEOs were familiar with. It meant pointing out that most executives were stuck in stress rather than scaling with clarity.
But being different created a unique space. I didn’t need to be dramatically better than every other coach. I just needed to be slightly better and notably different. This combination produced outsized results.
How Quality Creates Outsized Rewards
When you commit to exceptional quality in a focused area, the returns don’t simply double—they can multiply many times over. This happens because making a bold commitment isn’t about working harder; it’s about taking a completely different approach that leads to mastery and freedom.
Most productivity advice focuses on efficiency—doing more in less time. But bold thinking flips this idea. It’s not about doing more; it’s about doing less, but at a much higher level of quality. This shift creates a snowball effect that can lead to dramatically greater outcomes.
Simple Steps for Your Bold Commitment
If you’re considering a bold new commitment, start here:
Ask yourself: What small portion of my work creates most of my results?
Consider: What would happen if I focused exclusively on this area?
Reflect: What activities or commitments are holding me back? My stable engineering career was both a blessing and a limitation.
Face the truth: What uncomfortable “no” decisions am I avoiding? Saying “no” to security was my biggest challenge.
These questions will reveal uncomfortable truths. Activities you’ve invested years in might be holding you back. Relationships you value might be incompatible with your vision. Habits you’ve developed might belong to your past, not your future.
Embracing Discomfort for Growth
The path to extraordinary growth isn’t complicated. It requires clarity, commitment, and courage to eliminate everything that doesn’t align with your highest potential.
My mission is to change how organisations are led. No more hesitation. No more stress. Just momentum, impact, and exponential growth.
This mission demanded bold commitment. It required saying “no” to the safe path. It meant embracing discomfort again and again.
The question isn’t whether you can make a bold commitment. The question is whether you have the courage to embrace the discomfort of saying “no” to everything holding you back.
Conclusion: The Courage to Make a Bold Commitment
The path to extraordinary growth isn’t easy, but it’s simpler than most people realize. It doesn’t require superhuman abilities or endless hours of work. It requires clarity, commitment, and the courage to eliminate everything that doesn’t align with your highest potential.
By committing fully to the few areas where you can truly excel and saying “no” to everything else—despite the discomfort—you create the space for exponential growth. You free yourself from the trap of incremental thinking and open the door to breakthrough results.
Remember: How you approach one thing reflects how you approach everything. When you commit to high standards in one area of your life, that commitment will naturally spread to other areas. The result is not just better outcomes, but a better you—defined by mastery, purpose, and the joy that comes from living at your highest potential.
The question isn’t whether you can make this bold commitment. The question is whether you have the courage to embrace the discomfort of saying “no” to everything that’s holding you back. If you do, you’ll discover that bold commitments are not only more rewarding but also more achievable than you ever imagined.