How we work is exactly how we live

Over the years, I have realised that work shapes us far more deeply than we acknowledge. We spend more hours with colleagues than with anyone else, and the habits we practice during those hours follow us home. How we handle pressure at work becomes how we handle stress in life. The standards we set in our work become the standards we expect from ourselves everywhere. And the mindset we bring to problems in the office often becomes our default approach to problems outside it. Psychology and neuroscience both confirm this: the brain learns through repetition. Whatever we practice most consistently, patience, ownership, curiosity, or avoidance becomes our operating system.

I have seen this play out inside CARS24. When people raise their game here, they raise their expectations outside it. When they grow more accountable at work, they become more grounded in life. When they pursue clarity in our discussions, they communicate better elsewhere and the reverse is equally true. Professional and personal growth reinforce each other; it’s hard to improve in one without improving in the other.

This is why our values matter. They are traits worth cultivating because they make us better at our jobs and better in our lives. They are also traits we look for in one another, because the people around you shape your thinking, ambition, standards and growth far more than any policy ever could. Culture, at its core, is a set of shared habits that strengthen the best parts of us. And our values serve as the design principles for becoming better thinkers, better teammates and, ultimately, better humans.

Spark Love at its core is about how we treat people. I’ve never seen anyone become worse in life because they learned to be more patient, more compassionate or more clear. Micro-interactions matter. A 10-second human response lowers cortisol, increases trust, and improves cooperation, all scientifically measured. When you practice genuine care at work, you build emotional muscle memory that you carry everywhere. Strong teams and strong relationships tend to come from the same behaviours.

Take Action is something life rewards just as much as work does. A bias for action isn’t just an Amazon phrase; it’s a cognitive strategy. Acting, experimenting, initiating, these things build competence quickly. People who practice an active mindset don’t wait for circumstances; they create clarity by engaging with the problem. And once you learn to move decisively at work, you stop freezing in life. Action compounds everywhere.

Raise Standards is really about identity. When you consistently choose to deliver thoughtful, honest, high-quality work, your brain builds a narrative about who you are. This narrative becomes stable: “I don’t do sloppy work.” That identity travels with you. You start expecting more from yourself in health, in relationships, in promises you make, even in how you rest. High standards are less about perfection and more about protecting the integrity of your own self-image.

Feel Accountable is the shift that changes someone from reactive to powerful. People with an internal locus of control, those who believe their choices shape outcomes, consistently outperform, live healthier, and build stronger relationships. Accountability moves you from passive thinking (“I hope this improves”) to active thinking (“Here’s what I’ll do next”). It also makes life less chaotic. You stop feeling like things happen to you. You start feeling capable of navigating them.

Be Ambitious because ambition broadens your world. Big goals activate long-term thinking, and long-term thinking improves judgment. When you push yourself professionally, your imagination expands. You begin to see possibilities in your personal life too. Ambition isn’t loud or arrogant; it’s the quiet confidence that you can grow beyond the version of yourself you started with.

Remain Passionate because passion is a sustainable energy system. People with genuine interest in their craft operate with a different level of resilience and curiosity. Neuroscience shows they enter flow states more often, which improves both the quality of their work and the quality of their life. Passionless environments drain; passionate ones compound.

Practise Humility because humility unlocks learning. Ego blocks information. Humility invites it in. Humble people adapt faster, collaborate better and build more durable relationships. They don’t break under feedback. They grow through it. Humility isn’t self-erasure; it’s self-awareness. It makes everything, work and life less frictional.

The Founder Mindset ties everything together. Ownership is a philosophy, you either see the world as something you participate in building or something you passively experience. Founder-like thinkers don’t wait for instruction. They look for leverage points. They ask better questions. They take responsibility for the arc of their careers and the arc of their lives. It’s no coincidence that proactive people tend to report more meaning and satisfaction.

When I step back and look at all of this, a simple pattern appears: your values are not rules for how to work and instead are a blueprint for how to grow. And the kind of growth they create shows up in every corner of your life, not just in performance metrics. A company built on these principles becomes strong. But more importantly, people shaped by these principles become strong.

This is how I see CARS24 at its best. A place where we grow the company by growing ourselves and grow ourselves by building something difficult, meaningful and worth being proud of. A place where work and life reinforce each other instead of competing with each other. A place where the qualities that help us win in the market are the same qualities that make us better in the world.

That is the kind of compounding effect worth pursuing and it is one I hope we continue building together, deliberately, and for the long term.