Break the Mold, Shape the Future | Gaurav Kejriwal | TEDxIIMKashipur
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hl_CLJa-jg Video ID: -Hl_CLJa-jg ============================================================ [Music] [Music] good morning everyone I am gal I a vice pres vice president in a leading analytics Consulting organization I was born into a low lower middle class family uh of a very hardworking couple who wanted to provide everything to their children and at the same time inculcate the right mix of qualities to ensure that they are successful in their lives I I have over a decade of experience in strategic Consulting and modeling no no not the kind of photo Ram modeling at all it is a statistical modeling which is done on a laptop desktop uh I have experience in marketing product and risk analytics and uh I lead a team of 50 plus team members and manage close to 20 plus client relationships uh I work with um the various hierarchy of corporate leadership ranging from business unit heads to the highest asence of the corporate hierarchy and that is the cxos some of this uh experience will come in more relevant as I progress to my talk now coming to our topic dwell and Conquer uh I like to think that life gives us lot of opportunities to take a moment step back think what you need to do and then decide your path to uh decide your path in your life let me take this moment to uh help you through my journey of a couple of such profound events which are uh very close to my heart one of them helped me steer through life failure and another helped me uh look at life from a different perspective now let me take you back to 2006 2007 time frame when I like countless others uh in India wanted to get into the wanted to get a coed spot in the top engineering institutions of the country uh I was very good at mathematics always SC qu 100 on 100 in mathematics throughout my school and was often dubbed as perfectionist uh therefore I had a very strong sense of confidence in my abilities to be able to crack that entrance examination however life had a different plan for me I just could not crack this entrance examination but I scored my minimum score in mathematics ever in fact it could be minimum for anyone uh and therefore I led into a college of below my aspirations that sense of disappointment and frustration weighed on me and setting the stage for yet another even more challenging setback I scored zero in one of my college papers now imagine you know an 18 18-year-old boy who was very good in you know his academics throughout his school and then couldn't crack the entrance examination of the top engineering colleges and then score zero of in a college which was below his aspect aspirations I was shattered that was beyond my imagination completely I and at that point in time you know it used to matter to me a lot in terms of what others people think of me how others perceive me as and therefore I started hiding when I uh when I could not crack the entrance examination I completely cut off my study group from my life after I scored zero again I started hiding from my classmates my friends I put way too much pressure on me than I actually deserved and eventually I lost my appetite became leaner got diagnosed with chicken pox at the same time it was indeed a very challenging phase but amid my Ray of Hope uh you know and looking for some kind of help that 10 15 days of recovery period of chicken poox actually helped me a lot because that point in time I started a series of deep serious introspection tried to understand what has gone right what has gone wrong in the last few years Discerning my missteps from the right choices and as well as understanding what is in my control and what isn't and then I had a profound realization that it is all about how you control your mind it is very similar to how in a race in a race course horses wear blinders uh in front of their eyes to ensure that they focus what is ahead of them and do not get disturbed by what is beside or what is behind them in life we also need similar kind of focus to be able to sail through some of the challenges now there were three learnings coming out of this incident number one failures of part of life accept them embrace them they are as much as your own as your own successes because at the end of the day result is not in your control there's a very famous schloka in our Hindu holy book bhagwat Gita which says k it means one should focus on doing their duties and should not concern themselves from the outcomes of their duties just give your best and forget about the rest leave the rest to the divine power secondly second learning was accept your mistakes when I look back in the hindsight I realized that I had always known that I was not putting in the right kind of effort to be able to crack that entrance examination it was just that I was not ready to admit it to myself I did do that but it was quite after long and then finally I was able to move on from that we should consider mistakes as acceptable you know it is actually innate nature of human to make mistakes to ear is human we have all heard that right and mistakes should not only be considered acceptable but also should be cons considered as a very powerful tool for self-improvement and it does not mean that you keep making same mistakes again and again and say that I'm learning from it ioving it means that you strive to not repeat the same mistake again and again and ensure that you uh after you make a mistake you step back think understand what you need to improve and move on from there and maybe go onto a path of making a different mistake uh thirdly liberate yourself from others opinions see it doesn't matter what other people say right that is also one of the things you cannot control how other people act how other people uh you know think what other people have to say about you whether it is a criticism or it's a praise it does not matter why to let it occupy your mind the important thing is you actually think what where you need to be and just focus on your goal and try to achieve that now with all those learnings I uh moved forward I regained my focus and then I started uh thinking about another goal and this time the goal was to crack the entrance examination of the top management Institutes of the country and get into the top three B schools and and yes this time I did achieve that and to be very honest I was ready for any result this time uh I've been talking a lot about grades you know going through the entrance examinations being unhappy about scoring zero and by now you would have understood that I was a very studious guy always focusing on academic success and when I started my MBA Journey it was a Natural Choice to again focus on academic success however again life had a different plan it presented in front of me an opportunity to become a placement representative of my college now a placement representative is responsible for securing job placements for their seniors as well as internship placements for their uh Juniors right and it's a very responsible very uh time consuming uh it requires a lot of effort this particular job and it leaves very little room for your own personal Pursuits and academic success or academic studies in fact uh however in turn it provides you a lot of uh you know opportunities to interact with global uh you know executiv of the global uh organizations and at the same time uh you know gather a lot of uh capabilities and abilities in yourself of course it was a hard decision you know to even whatever decision I need to make it was bit of hard and I was very averse to change at that point in time uh I had to leave my GPA driven path and go on to a completely different path from here on and therefore I thought about it a lot I discussed a lot with myself what I want to do in my life and what has what I have lagged what I want to achieve I discussed a lot with my close group of friends and then finally decided to take this uh decision of you know going and becoming a placement representative from there on and I'll be very honest when I say this I'm able to speak in front of you for 10 15 minutes only because I took that decision I left the mold of a shy hesitant uh uh introvert kind of a guy there on and you know gained so much confidence in that one year of that particular role that until today I feel that that is the one of the best decisions of my life uh it changed my personality by a great deal and it is helping me in my you know professional world as well you know I'm able to uh I have shed actually any inhibitions which I had in terms of approaching uh unfamiliar individuals I I'm able to cultivate meaningful relationship with my prospective clients and Al fored relationship with existing ones um and again uh three learnings again from this incident number one take calculated risks sometimes it is okay to jump onto an unnown territory sometimes it is okay that you don't know what's on the other side and what will happen at the end of the day right either you'll be successful or you will not be but at least you will know what not to do if you're not successful at least you will know what to do learning what not to do is equally important as learning what to do secondly standing out of the crowd I was just one of the 10 placement representatives in a batch of 460 it and it helped me hugely till today it is helping and I'm sure it will help me throughout right and it gave me also confidence to stand out to do something different and one example being I'm probably the only vice president in my company to log off or to end his day at 8:00 p.m. IST despite working with clients based out of us and UK it's not easy it's very difficult and and it is always challenging to swim against the tide however with persistence if you are able to do that you will be able to achieve something that no one has been able to do third learning was uh believing in yourself I remember a quote in my moral science book in primary school which said God helps those who help themselves help yourself by believing in yourself see whatever you you want to do in professional life or personal life you have to truly believe in yourself to be able to achieve something of course you have to complement with hard work however it starts with a spark and that is belief and sometimes you may need some external help as well to be able to keep that self-confidence and I would like to mention especially mention my wife here who actually keeps me motivated in that regards whenever I lose that spark in in myself so to sumarize you know we've talked about a lot of different uh you know approaches towards life uh in terms of into ensuring that your mindset is accurate right and conquering to me does not mean winning or does not mean you know achieving what you desire for it is about winning over your fears it is about controlling your thoughts it is about having that Focus um and I created a framework Called Peace uh you know to which actually helped me ensure that I have that mindset and actually eventually attain mental peace at the same time and it it means pee as in persistent keep working hard for what you want to achieve uh again it may happen that the results are not to your liking you're not able to achieve what you're Desiring for and it's okay to be sad to be unhappy about it to mul over it it's fine but don't fret about it for too long move on from there as soon as possible again remember it's the hard work that is in your control is the focus that is in your control results or not secondly e as an Empower Empower Yourself by believing in yourself if you are able to believe in yourself if you're truly able to believe that you able to achieve something then you'll be able to put the right kind of hard work that you desire a avoid avoid distractions does not matter what other people have to say just focus on what you want to achieve C Cal calculated risk take calculated risk in life that brings in spark otherwise you would never know how rewarding or different your life could have been e empathy start with yourself it's okay to make mistakes accept them learn from them and decide your next journey and be respectful for with others as well sometimes there are lot of energies lot of people come together and help you in your journey it is your duty as well to do the same for others in closing I would just like to say that uh let the fusion of dwelling and conquering be our Guiding Light towards a future where dreams become reality thank you