Transcriber: A R Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
Unlike many other esteemed speakers of tonight,
neither am I someone famous
nor have I reached the highest echelon of my pursuits yet.
Then why am I here today?
What value do I add to this highly acclaimed panel of speakers?
Well, I can say that I am someone
who has always been on a journey to pursue his passion,
who has tasted both success and failure, and still continues the journey.
So I can tell you about my take
on some of the upsides and downsides of following your passion.
Broadly, I'll share three key takeaways
from the twisted journey of me following my passion.
Some of them might sound a bit counterintuitive at first.
But by the end of it, hopefully all of us will be on the same page.
So here comes the first takeaway.
Your dream can be very different from what you think your dream is.
When we start to think about our professional life,
primarily in the high school or college days,
we often pick up cues from people we admire or idolize.
And we believe that our dreams
are also structured on the similar lines as theirs.
It all happens at a very subconscious level.
And our limited knowledge and wisdom lead us to think this way.
Apart from that,
a lot of times we pick up the easy option out of confusion or laziness.
Which is also known as the default effect.
Among the set of options that someone has to choose from,
the default option is the one
with minimal proactive change in the chooser's trajectory.
In other words, the normative or suggested option.
We tend to fall for this default setting,
thereby prolonging and sanctifying the status quo.
Given a choice of trying something new
or sticking to the tried and tested method,
we tend to be highly conservative,
even if a potential change is beneficial or desirable for us.
And that's how sometimes we get stuck with what we think we should do
instead of what we want to do.
It's completely fine to continue doing what you think you should do,
for some time or to some extent,
in order to fulfill your regular roles and responsibilities.
But over time you should be able to identify your driving forces
or the lack thereof.
And if what you think you should do
systematically overrides what you want to do,
then it's time to reassess and consider whether a change is in order.
To give you an example from my life,
when I wrote the pre-medical entrance exam
I was just following the footsteps of other people around.
And after securing a reasonably good rank,
my admission in MBBS was simply the default effect.
I opted for the normative or suggested option only.
But I did not know about these things at that point in time.
Over the course of next few years,
I sensed that my "should do" bit, which was pursuing medicine,
started to override what I wanted to do.
And I realized practicing medicine
was not something that I wanted to pursue in my life.
But I did not have much clarity on what I wanted to pursue in my life.
So I completed my MBBS and continued medicine for some time.
As the famous poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou said,
"Do the best you can until you know better.
Then when you know better, do better."
Because understanding your passion,
knowing what you want to do in life, realizing your dreams -
all this is like a big jigsaw puzzle.
You have to go one step or maybe a few steps at a time.
Which brings us to the second takeaway.
You may not know what your dream is,
but over time you should know what your dream isn't.
Frankly, it's very difficult to know what exactly want to do in your life
since the very beginning of your professional career,
unless you are very lucky.
But if you keep exploring, sometimes like a broken compass,
then eventually you'll get to know what all you don't want to pursue in life.
And whenever you come across something
that you don't want to pursue in the long run,
you get one step or maybe a few steps closer
to knowing what you may want to pursue in the long run.
This process also helps you reshaping and refining your dreams.
Hopefully you'll reach there sooner or later.
As the famous baseball player Yogi Berra said,
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
Which basically means, if you don't know exactly what to do, do something.
Come outside your comfort zone, try new things.
And refuse, with all your might, to give in to the outcome bias.
As in, never judge a decision purely by its result,
especially when randomness and external factors
play a significant role in the result.
A bad result does not automatically indicate a bad decision or vice versa.
So, rather than lamenting on a wrong decision
or celebrating for one that only coincidentally led to success,
try to understand why you took those decisions.
Why did you choose what you did in the first place?
Were you reasons rational and understandable enough?
If yes,
then you better stick to that method, even if you don't get lucky sometimes.
And in the pursuit of trying new things,
don't wait for some magical things to happen in your life.
Those magical things - they never happen just like that.
Often they are a culmination of many smaller things, smaller pieces.
Try to pursue those pieces - the potential components of one big thing.
Because ultimately it's like a big jigsaw puzzle.
Until and unless you gather more pieces,
you would not be able to see the bigger picture.
So,
the process of informed elimination backed by a rational trial and error approach
is often the more pragmatic way to know what your dream is.
Again to relate it to my life - after my MBBS,
I started to explore things that I thought my dreams were aligned to,
like photography, rock climbing, scuba diving.
So I pursued wildlife photography for some time.
I completed basic and advanced rock climbing,
explored scuba diving.
And I ended up becoming a semi-professional wildlife photographer
and wildlife tourism entrepreneur for a couple of years.
I really liked it.
But I also realized that my dream was something else.
I wanted to do something that could impact many lives at once.
But had I not come out of my comfort zone and tried those things,
probably I would not have got that much clarity
on what I wanted to do in my life.
Those things exposed me to a bigger world
and a larger set of people outside my comfort zone.
Which played a significant role in me realizing my dreams.
And after a lot of contemplation, I decided to do my MBA.
Why?
That brings us to the third and final takeaway of tonight.
Passion alone is not enough.
Yes, doing something that your heart wants is not enough.
A sense of fulfillment is also necessary in life.
When your energy and your effort solves some problems,
and those solutions add value to other people's lives,
that's where fulfillment comes into the picture.
To reach there, passion alone is not enough.
You need to generate value with your genius.
Let me explain what I mean by genius here.
Usually the word genius refers to someone who is exceptional at something,
like "He's a genius," "She's a genius."
But, by origin, the word genius means something different.
It means the essence of something or someone.
That way, instead of asking, "Is he or she a genius?"
it makes more sense to ask,
"What is his genius?" "What is her genius?"
And to the extent you understand and embrace your genius
you get to know what makes you "you."
And that allows you to make the kind of choices
which helps you bridge the gap
between who you are and what you are doing.
So don't just run behind one passion only.
Try to find a sweet spot
where you are doing something you are passionate about
and that leverages your strengths, your essence, your genius.
It is also possible that you may find yourself
not yet optimally skilled to be there.
Given our life experiences and professional experiences,
we possess some expertise.
But to better equip ourselves
to reach the sweet spot between our passion and genius,
we may need to add some additional tools to our repertoire -
mental models far afield from our areas of expertise.
So try to identify your shortcomings
and find suitable knowledge and tools to balance them.
Like with my knowledge of health care
and passion for impacting many lives at once,
I started to realize that my genius lied somewhere in problem-solving -
like deconstructing a bigger problem into multiple smaller problems,
and solving them with various enablers, like people, process, technologies.
With this realization,
I started my journey to add tools to my repertoire with my MBA.
I have also focused on areas
like public health, healthcare operations, management consulting, and other fields
that could better equip me
to reach the sweet spot between my passion and my genius.
The journey has helped me internalize many important ideas of new areas.
It has redirected my efforts
towards adding value to the lives of others.
It was tough. It took time.
But it has definitely been worth it.
Still, do I have all the necessary skills to excel in my pursuits?
I keep asking this question to myself.
And a very interesting quote by historian Daniel Boorstin comes to my rescue.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery
is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge."
So the first step is to not fall for some preconceived notions
that create the illusion of knowledge.
Acknowledge your ignorance.
Accept that there is a lot that you may not know yet.
The next step is acquiring knowledge in bits and pieces - one step at a time.
And hopefully, the logical culmination of all these things
would lead to the discovery.
Am I anywhere close to the discovery yet?
Maybe. Maybe not.
But I believe I will reach there sooner or later.
Until then, the journey continues.
And with each step, I get closer and closer
to realizing my dreams, to fulfilling my dreams.
And I do believe, so will you.
Thank you very much.