It has been constantly reinforced to me to not bring my personal baggage into my professional life, that it is a sign of weakness. I have believed in it too, very strongly. Probably more so because I am a woman and there is this self-imposed need to prove myself in a world that dismisses women easily, especially once we are married.

But recently my thinking has changed. The hardships we go through in our personal lives strongly influence the kind of people we become and there is no way to keep that separate for 8 hours every day. Even when I do keep those two components apart from each other, I am aware that the influence is still there in the form of overcompensation, added mental stress and so on. On the flip side, we are shaped the most by our hard times and what we learn from those experiences brings empathy, diverse perspectives and multiple dimensions to our thinking which our work benefits from.

With this insight, I now question why we don’t encourage people to openly discuss their personal struggles with their co-workers and managers. Facilitating such interactions would build a stronger circle of trust and camaraderie within the company which will have far reaching long-term effects. No number of team bonding activities can ever replicate that.