Transcript

I'm not normal and frankly, that is okay. | Siddhanth Bhargava | TEDxNMIMS

quite a warm welcome i am a tall guy but uh today we're going to talk about something that is very close to my heart or through this conversation i think a lot of you all will relate because uh as a content creator you try and be relatable others are not a good content creator but you will relate and the hope is that you end up learning a little something through my experiences because as they say if you can learn from somebody's mistakes or you're smart and i'm assuming you guys are smart so let's do this no easier way to say this but my life hasn't been normal and a lot of you guys will relate to this with this that your lives haven't been normally though i'm not saying my life was special my life was unique i'm just saying it wasn't normal and frankly i'm okay with it i'm dr siddhan bhagav as i was rightly introduced yes i do run a startup yes uh i am tall uh but let me tell you why my life isn't normal i'm gonna start it when i was in the fourth standard uh i got diagnosed with um something which has become popular now known as alopecia a lot of fights have happened over alopecia but i was diagnosed with alopecia and vitiligo so my childhood basically was spent with me trying to cover up these spots on my head would try to part my hair in weird ways of course i got made fun of that and trying and wearing all these full sleeve t-shirts because i had these white spots on my skin yes i was whiter than what i am right now uh moving on uh i did medicine i was a good student i got into medicine finished medicine uh suddenly the final year i realized i don't want to do medicine everybody was furious because being a doctor is all i wanted so i quit medicine i dropped out in the final year six months before my exam the reason was because i got diagnosed with something known as lupus now lupus is something which is incurable but the alopecia that i told you about in a span of 20 days i lost every speck of hair on my entire body so basically you can imagine a cue ball the pool cue ball that's what i became i was weird i lost all confidence i didn't want to go out of my house or children used to call me like used to pull their mom's uh dress and say marvux and it wasn't it was okay and basically i was shattered right because i was 21 year old kid uh who didn't know what he wanted to do in life so basically self-doubt against something that shouldn't be late with and my self-confidence was essentially zero somehow i pulled myself back up i don't think i did a great job at it but somehow i got there started my startup which um really helped everything is going fine two years ago i got diagnosed with thyroid cancer so i was like and then back down so i helped rebuild myself up and that happened again not normal right so now i'm a 25 year old boy who's got lupus on one side and thyroid cancer on the other of course i get operated i take my radiotherapy and i'm back to normal life goes on but this is why life isn't normal and i'm assuming that everybody in this audience has had their set of problems the whole the whole i started my conversation by saying that life isn't normal but i'm not saying i'm special i'm not saying i'm unique i'm just saying i'm not normal which goes for a lot of you out here a lot of people have had their share of problems a lot of people are getting over their share of problems and a lot of people are not normal like i am but frankly we're all okay with it the way i live life has changed right when you've got a lot of these things uh you rebuild yourself multiple times your family treats you different your friends treat you different i never was a fan of sympathy i don't like being felt sorry for is why i managed to talk about this in a way where i'm trying to teach you all something so i'm gonna teach you what life taught me and this is what my entire tedx talk is about with all these experience obviously your character is shaped my personality my character my perspective the way i think was all changing as i was going through all this and let me give you a glimpse of how i live life now and hopefully you guys can learn something about it point number one problems problems are there in every sphere of your life be it uh relationship problems be it money problems be it parent problems be it whatever like you can extrapolate this into being anything but the problem with problems is like it's like they're like dominoes the moment one falls you automatically go into the spiral and then everything in your life starts falling down like dominoes most people move into a really bad headspace over there because suddenly you feel oh my god everything is going wrong it becomes difficult to reel out of it because you genuinely believe that why is this happening to me how do i make sure that i fix this easier said than done but what i ended up practicing was that i stopped victimizing myself the first thing when you're dealing with any kind of problem no matter how small no matter how big because when you're dealing with the problem it always seems big stop victimizing yourself when i say that what i'm trying to say is that for a little bit you will when you're going through something when you're sad when you're upset obviously you want the sympathy obviously you want the attention you want people to be there for you you want people to love you but the problem with self victimization is in the beginning it's fine it's a little healthy because you need that time but later you realize that it prevents growth if you keep putting yourself back down in that cage which life has put you in you're never going to be able to grow the whole point is that instead of those dominoes following one after the other make some space between those dominoes think about it if the first one fell and there was a lot of space between the second one do you think the second one would fall absolutely not let me put into perspective the idea is compartmentalize when you realize one thing is going wrong in life that should not be the reason why 100 other things start going wrong in life compartmentalize realize what is going wrong in life think do i have a solution to it right now if you don't you might have one later if you do fix it but don't start thinking negatively about everything else and trust me all of this is practice right now you think about it probably you go back home and maybe revisit this conversation that you know siddhant said something like that but it's only when you manage to practice it's only when you manage to create this buffer in your head that problems can keep coming and i can keep dealing with them in this particular manner is when you will start making some progress and i'm an example of that right like i don't think things affect me anymore because i know even if they do i'm going to compartmentalize and move on the second learning that i had throughout all of this is define what success means to you how many of you over here think that you are successful i can see two hands in probably 200 people five hands how many of your think i am successful i still see two hands but that's okay the whole point is you need to define success for you for some it's fail for some it's money for some it's uh having a great family for me success is contentment the reason i say success is contentment is because once you achieve it it cannot go away the reason i say success is contentment is i am not saying being content means being satisfied not at all you aren't satisfied with life you're always striving for more you still want to grow but being content means you're in a general state of happiness with who you are and how you are the moment you reach here you're gold but the problem is it's very difficult when i said something like success is contentment half the people must be thinking i mean what does that even mean but that's what we're all chasing right when i was younger say three years ago four years ago all i wanted was money money money money a little while later when i started doing content and i got that gratification i made my page in a year so then i wanted fame fame fame fame but now i've realized that i don't know how long my life is like it sounds weird right like a 27 year old boy saying i don't know how long my life but it's true so when i become content with life that's the time when i'm going to be truly happy and that is success for me once i get there i will let you know the third principle that i live by is that i come first i am the most important person in my own life self-preservation no matter who you live with no matter who you speak to of course i care about people i help people i'm a nice person i choose to believe i'm a nice person but when it comes between me and somebody else i will always choose my peace i will always choose my happiness because i come first the moment you stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about everything around you that's a problem of course we know how to deal with problems now but that's how i've always been these last five years i have been selfish it is not wrong to be selfish not at all why is it wrong to want things for yourself it's not as long as you're a good human being as long as you being selfish does not prevent somebody else from doing something else i think that's okay and that's my third principle my fourth principle is achievements are not made from talent achievements are made from resilience when i was young i used to think i'm super smart like i got my iq tested and in school and college i was really would you eat boy bolton and that was me i always thought i'm gonna kill it in life when i entered the real world i realized i'm not that smart after all i'm really not i may be good at certain things i'm bad at a lot of things i may be good at say talking to okra but i may be genuinely bad at running a business but the point is i still own a 500 business i still am making another startup that is going to change the way diabetes is treated i'm still doing all of that and i'm not smart enough to do it why do i end up doing it because i show up every single day i'm not smart enough to be doing anything but resilience beats talent always we've all heard about those stories right or this kid is super smart he's going to be damn successful in life but then that kid sometimes doesn't get there but the other kid who was always at that 80 mark but he knew he studied every single day his attitude towards life was so positive that he put his best foot forward every single day irrespective of how capable he was he's the one who gets there that's me now that can be you too resilience will beat talent always just show up don't run from your problems don't run from situations just show up and half that battle is won and the last point and this is this is me like this one line has helped me get through this too shall pass all you've got to do is believe i just got goosebumps every time i do this on stage and i say this line i always get goosebumps because this has been me forever my dad told me um i think six or seven years ago and he tells me this today he that time he told me that you know sudan things seem bad now things seem like you know it's ending for you it's not gonna last today he tells me sudan you know in your head you think you're very successful and you seem fortunate and you've got money and all of that it's not going to last there is a concept which is known as regression to the mean which means everything will always come back to the center this too shall pass nothing stays permanent these are the five principles that i have gathered over the last five six years that have genuinely helped me become me that have genuinely helped me grow and hopefully once you start applying these principles they might help you too i'm going to leave you with my last thought and uh this has now become the way i live life this has now become the answer to all my problems whenever i have a problem i know that somebody has it worse you know so many people ask me that you know sudan oh my god so many things happen to you how did you deal with it my problems were my problems my problems were not small neither are yours supposing you've got a fractured arm and you can't write that's a major problem but what's in my head is that if i know that my problem has a solution that's what i start looking at i don't sit and keep thinking about how big my problems are because the fact of the matter is that there are so many people out there who've just had it worse their problems might not even have a solution but if you can understand how to solve your problem you're going to find the correct way to fly and nothing actually can stop you so i'm going to repeat what i said i'm dr sadan bhargava i am not normal and frankly i'm okay with it