Transcript

The Ever Changing Path of Following Your Heart. | Zoe Viccaji | TEDxNUST

so yeah so just to reiterate one of the first few things that were asked were growing up is what do you want to be when you grow up and you guys said you remember someone said they want to be a pilot how often have we heard people saying they want to be doctors teachers do you know what I said so when I was growing up I said I wanted to be God which was highly unrealistic but my point is that I was being asked at an age that I had no idea what was what I mean that's how old I was I said I want to be God I didn't know what was what so I think from a very young age there begins this pressure of what you want to be what you don't want to be right so for myself actually growing up many years have been filled with this anxiety and this unsure 'ti in fact on my way here I spoke to a lot of students and I try to gauge and I feel like a lot of people are still at that stage where they're not quite sure so as you said there's doctors lawyers I remember one kid said they want to be an astronaut my question is how do you know that's what you want to be how do you know for example for a doctor how do you know the number of years of med school that you're going to have to go through the fact that you're responsible for people's lives you know everything that goes into it how do you how can you possibly know my question around grade six was that I wanted to be a vet now at that time you know I was told follow your heart and my heart was telling me that I want to be a vet because I I loved animals and I'd go around the neighborhood I'd you know save all the jungly Qatar's outside and you know bring them back home and look after them but I went I spent one summer interning at a vets at a doctor's office and I realized it was the last thing that I wanted to do and ironically it was because I loved animals so much that I realized I could not be there to endure their suffering so when we're told that follow your heart I think it's the last thing that I would want to do because my heart might be telling me something but I not might not be able to do that also your heart keeps changing your feelings keep changing what you want to do keeps changing I felt the place that I am be a first years out here second years third years and fourth years all right do you guys know what you want to do you do have somewhere in a body I can see some nose over here throughout your life you're told to follow your heart my question is what does it mean to follow your heart I don't think it's as simple as following your heart I think it's much more than that our educational system is such that in our all levels in our a levers there comes this point in a fork in the road where you have to choose between Sciences or you have to choose between business and economics right I remember I chose Sciences at that point and then finally when you get to college it's like this impending doom coming on you that you have to choose your major and that that that major is going to define you for the rest of your life I realized that some people choose the kind of fields the careers that they stick to and most people don't even stick to don't even stick to what they actually choose as their careers so what you choose in college in retrospect doesn't define you for that matter I shouldn't be saying this because I'm at a setting where you guys are in college but some of the most successful people in life are college dropouts like Bill Gates Mark Zuckerberg Steve Jobs right I myself went to college I actually studied I did not study to be a musician I studied to be an artist I went to New York upstate New York I studied for four years in art I went to Glasgow schools Glasgow School of Art I had tick boxed tick all the right boxes to be an artist and by the end when I was coming of college I realized that that is not really what I wanted to do it was like one of those relationships I was like sorry art it's not you it's me I've kind of changed my mind because I spent my senior thesis painting and got an idea of what it would feel like to actually be in art full-time and I was like that's not really one I what I want to do so what I realized was that you've got to enter the real world to actually figure it out for yourself so I think being in college having that be the point that you have to choose is actually very unrealistic it's an unrealistic deadlines for all of us and so like the sixth grader who has no idea what it likes what it's like to be a doctor or a pilot I have no idea what it is to be an artist so you really need to try the things talking to people that's not really going to help it does help a little bit it gives you a bit of an idea but it's only when you actually try it that you figure it out so throughout my career when I once I left college I decided I said okay here's the world it's open to me I don't want to be an artist now what do I want to do it sounds very inspiring that okay the world was open to me but it was also extremely extremely scary so I tried I wanted a documentary filmmaking in New York I worked for six months at one place where I basically I researched for a documentary filmmaker a filmmaker and I edited on the side as well after that I came back to Pakistan and I worked in film as well and I my last job that I had was advertising actually worked in advertising for two years and only after that was when I in 2011 was when I joined music full-time so that was about five years after being in college have you heard the saying that you have to kiss many frogs to find your prince I feel like for myself that's the way it was with the careers that I chose the parts that I chose I feel like those careers there were these frogs I just had to kiss and I had to you know go through those to find out but what's interesting is that I try to trace back and I try to see actually how did I end up in music and it made me realize that opportunity only comes when you put yourself in the way of it I always love music I grew up listening to music I grew up writing music and I always did musical theater on the side when I was in advertising I would be in advertising from 9:00 in the morning to about 6 7 in the evening and then I joined musical theater production and that's actually where I first did my first stage musical and it just so happened that rahael Hayat from Coke Studio was attending one of the shows and he saw me performing on stage along with sanam sanam say that she was one of the actresses with me and that was when the first two seasons of Coke Studio had happened and he asked us he says would you be interested in doing backing vocals and at that point we're like oh great like gets let's do it'll be a lot of fun and you know we joined Coke Studio and that was the first time that I received my first paycheck in music and I realized I was like hey I can actually get paid for something that I love doing this is something that you know and that I really enjoy and that's one actually clicked and it didn't feel like work when I was doing music another example I see of where opportunities arise because of you following your heart is some you know my own mother actually she's someone who I looked up to a great deal I I was very lucky I I grew up in a household and I had both sides I had my mother on one side who said do what you love doing and worry about the money later and then I had the very pragmatic side which is my father who said no you've got to worry about money you got to worry about the bills you have to figure out to get the accolades you've got to get do the career you've got to do the you know get the certificates but I saw my mother and and you know that's why when I went down the art route then I had went down the music route in fact she was an English literature teacher for most of her life and she used to have a blog online and then it was picked up by a publisher and now she's writing books and she's writing her second book and it's actually in its in its second print and it's it's doing very successfully so you never know what you're gonna run into so I mean I chose this picture because I thought it least rated very well where something and you know starts off at something and you never know where it's going to go when I was working in advertising those last two years before I went into music I remember one of the jobs that I got was working for KSC general KSC is electric company and my work entailed drawing up their annual review report and was the most dry most boring thing I had ever done and my grandmother lived around the area where the KSC office was in southern and I remember one of the evenings you know spending the evening with her and we used to call her GM short for grandmother and I said GM I was like I don't see how something like this is ever going to lead to anything as I just absolutely hated and she said you know she says no experience is ever wasted I looked that up on Google and I saw Oprah Winfrey said that but I think my grandmother said that first so I'm gonna stick to that but no experience is ever wasted and this is so true and because of that I think it's so important that when we do something that we do it with all our hearts and we do it well I really put my heart into that damn review report for KSC I did it well I went and I interviewed all the people I did really well but I continuously now through my musical career I see things that I never thought would actually you know play a part for example all those years there I spent in documentary filmmaking and in editing is something I use nowadays now I mean I make I work on music videos I edit some of my own music videos I know the ins and outs of production the advertising that I did I know the ins and out of marketing I know how to go to a company and tell them you know sell sell to them sell them an idea I know where they're thinking of how they want to actually you know how it makes sense to them to do a certain you know and to fund me to do my music so I do believe in doing something well I believe in not doing juga so I was trying to find an analogy to relate to compare what I see this as and I really have you guys played Ludo before I think life is like a game of Ludo some people know exactly how they want to start exactly the steps they want to take where they want to go I met some of those people today they knew exactly what they wanted to do I want to kill them sometimes because I'm like you know I wish that was the case for me but some people don't know but what's most important is that you keep moving that you keep moving you keep rolling that dice and you keep moving sure some of your goatees are going to get hit and they're going to go back to the beginning but you got to keep rolling and keep letting them out and somehow they're going to reach home so I think it's important never to settle I meet a lot of people now in their in their late 40s and their 50s who are changing careers now and I think that that gives me you know that added fodder for the fact that there is no deadline there is no time that you actually be like okay this is it and I think it's very important to keep moving and not settling when I was telling my sister was here last year I think doing a TED TED talk and I really like the way that she basically visualized things she told me she was sitting on top of our roof in our house and she was watching a kite and she very animatedly she's like the kite was like this and then it was like this and then it would get up and then it fall down again and it was just like she was like it was all over the place and these were her words she says you must spread your wings before you can find balance you will at first take up more space than you actually intend to occupy or even spaces that you didn't think that you would occupy but it is unlikely that you will just land on your core beliefs without some fumbling and knocking things around for myself writing this for today and actually researching what I was going to talk to you about today was actually very tough because I find myself at a crossroads once again I've now been doing music formally for about eight or nine years and I find myself in a position where it's starting to feel like something needs to change I'm not entirely happy with where I am I think I need to redress the kind of music I'm doing maybe going back to singing in English or change my genre so it's not all the I feel like I'm in that same situation it feels it feels a little bit like post-college where I didn't know where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do but I take comfort in the fact that I felt like this before and that finding my heart does mean constantly changing your path and it means constantly trying out things so I like to use it use their relationship analogy I think your work and you is like having a relationship it's something that you have to constantly keep alive you have to constantly reignite it and if you don't give it time and attention it is something that could possibly go stale so my main question that I want to leave you guys with today is that and here's something that we're talking about is that the only constant in life is change so then why are we so afraid to make changes so I hope that all of you guys going out into the real world so to speak whether you have it figured out or you don't have it figured out that you have the courage to make the changes when they need to be made that you never settle and that you always do what you do with all your heart and follow your heart [Applause] you