Defining My Me Brand

[Music]

you guys

must think i’m kind of crazy right i

mean

why am i still pouring water into a

glass

that’s already full well this mind

is just like that glass and the thousand

and one thoughts that we put through it

every day

are like that water experts estimate

that the human being thinks about fifty

000 thoughts a day that’s almost like 20

100 thoughts

an hour incredible unbelievable almost

isn’t it

but then the question arises how

do we put new thoughts into our mind we

have so

many existing ones running through it

in the next 18 minutes or so i cannot

promise you that you will learn

anything new but hopefully

you will unlearn at least one

but before we go there indulge in me and

just

close your eyes go on trust me

close your eyes you’re not going ahead

without that

thank you so much now

visualize yourself

visualize yourself not as you are today

but as

truly the most successful version

of you visualize yourself as

successful how do you see yourself

where are you who do you know who are

you with

what do you do as your most successful

version

open your eyes

so how many of you are feeling a little

bit

warm fuzzy and good about yourself right

now raise your hands

fantastic everybody but let’s get down

to become more specific how many of you

visualized possibly

a beautiful house uh standing next to

your dream car or perhaps on an amazing

vacation somewhere on the bahamas raise

your hands

i see some hands going up great uh or

perhaps

this is a more

uh famous option uh how many of you just

saw yourself with hot women so i think

maybe some of the guys okay yes

thank you for the honesty but possibly a

lot of you also saw

yourself um in a warm fuzzy family

with people that you love possibly in

the future kids in the background how

many out there

a few probably the older ones not the

students i agree but i guess the

students would probably visualize

yourself

in really cool dapper suits dressed

almost like harvey specter or jessica

pearson

who i knew it for filler choice

absolutely

or possibly let’s cut to the chase

some of you would see yourself as a rock

star

on stage killing it how many

yes we have some rock stars here but if

i

were to measure myself on any of these

yardsticks

then i would be deemed super

unsuccessful you see i didn’t follow my

family tradition of

the tried and tested proven formula of

science and engineering

i built a career which went great places

but then

i left it just before it peaked

and then of course i failed i failed big

time because i wasn’t able to

um take my entrepreneurial venture and

make it into the next

big unicorn i also

lost my entire life savings down to the

last penny i was broke 15 years of hard

work

and the bank account went zilch

i also had to change at one point my

status in life from married to divorced

and

to be honest i still don’t have any kids

so one would wonder then

why am i invited to speak on a

prestigious tedx stage

right so but before you completely write

me off at this point

hold that thought and let me share with

you a small story

it goes back to this day 28th

of december 1932

in the junaga district of gujarat a baby

boy is born to a

very humble family of a schoolteacher

and his wife

but this boy this boy builds

a dream which is larger than life itself

he creates an empire which becomes one

of the largest

multi-billion dollar empires in the

world and

one of his sons now is india’s richest

man

any guesses from the audience who i’m

talking about

great deer by ambani absolutely bang on

well

five years ahead exactly five years

ahead on the 28th

of december again 1937

another baby boy is born this time into

an affluent family

of bombay and this boy takes his family

business to these great heights

in fact he builds it into an empire

an empire which had you know which was

the largest conglomerate with over a

hundred companies under his umbrella

and a market cap of over 100 billion

dollars any guesses who this person is

wow we have an intelligent audience

rathan tata that’s right absolutely but

fast forward some 38 years

and exactly on the 28th of

december let’s go back on the 28th

of december 1975 this time a baby girl

is born

in the beautiful city of calcutta into a

truly middle class family

now mind you there was no business in

sight

or even in her jeans but this girl she

felt that

she was special from the beginning she

thought that she was

born to do something big though what

big was was still a blank

white beautiful canvas to her

as this girl started growing up she

started filling

up her white blank canvas with what she

was taught

in school with what she observed of her

friends and peers with what she

learned from her parents and well one

day what she deduced herself

when she found out that she shared her

birthday with these two

amazing personalities she thought this

was a

sign that she was going to become the

next big business leader of the country

the next big

ceo the next big business icon and with

that belief

she made her educational choices and

embarked on her

career well no points for guessing this

one

that little girl was me

i lived the dreams that i

was conditioned to dream

and it was only after i’d explored most

of them

and achieved a few that i realized

they had never been mine

and so one day after having

left my corporate career and later on

after even shutting down my

entrepreneurial venture i

woke up one day literally and

figuratively

i was 40 i was clueless

i had all these achievements but i felt

unfulfilled

the oxford dictionary defines success

as the fact that you have achieved what

you wanted to do and what you have been

trying to do the fact

that you have become rich or

famous or attained a high social status

money fame power that is how success

is defined in ink for us so no matter

not it’s not very surprising that when

we visualize ourselves as successful

we almost visualize the same picture in

mind but hey why should our dreams and

definitions all be the same

when we have different thumbprints

the oxford dictionary was written in the

year 9

1864. 136 years

have passed since we have been to the

moon and

back we have lit up our homes with

electricity we fly the skies in the

biggest bird of them all and we can

communicate with anytime anywhere

any place and yet we are shackled by

these age

old definitions

millions and millions years ago success

was actually defined as this

survive eat or get eaten simple as that

we of course then moved on maslow’s

hierarchy perhaps

and success started to be defined as the

ability to make fire

to cook food to feed our mouth possibly

live beyond the average

age of 30. since 1864

we have hopefully moved on and if we

define success in the same way as we did

back then

then it would be to say that we have not

evolved

since then

as time passes society evolves we

personally evolve through personal

growth and in that process

we also discover our uniqueness well i

did too and when i discovered

myself and my uniqueness i started to

rewrite

my dreams and rewrite my definition

of success

success ladies and gentlemen is

ultimately

defined by the real fabric

of what makes you you

not by what others say or what you have

been conditioned

as you have been brought up but what the

makes you

you as a person

with the dictionary may have deemed me a

failure

i didn’t because i have learned in my

life

that success is not the absence of

failure in fact

why i this is a very famous thing how

many of you have heard this thing

raise your hands have you heard that

success is not the absence of failure

you see success is not just despite the

failure success

is due to the failures and

if you really haven’t failed it means

you haven’t tried hard

and if you haven’t failed enough in life

then it means

that you have not improved your chances

of success

take any story of any inspirational

person

that you have probably heard of and you

will keep hearing

of these points of time in their life

which are called trigger points when

they have taken choices in life and

taken decisions in life

the ones that define the course of their

life

it is that ability to identify that

fork in the road which takes you

to the path of greatness

sometimes left is right

the only thing that defines your purpose

in your life

is what leads you to your success

success is defined by one and one thing

only

your purpose your intention and your

calling

in life in fact i would say that the

biggest tragedy of life

is to be successful and i repeat here

the biggest tragedy of

your life is to be successful

if you achieve dreams that are not yours

in fact that’s also termed as midlife

crisis

one person’s success can be another

person’s midlife crisis

we now live in an age we now live in an

age where empowerment

wins over power where self-awareness

trumps general knowledge where mental

health is the

theme of the year 2020. the world

is changing it’s changing faster than

ever before

in fact we are generating so much data

as humankind that just in the last 24

months in the last two years we have

actually generated

more data on this planet than we have in

the entire

billions of years of human kind

but really it is all futile it is futile

if you don’t know yourself

and you don’t know your calling in life

your personal dream in life and how

you define yourself to be successful in

life

so really if ted came to me and said

you can speak for all of the 18 minutes

to your audience but you can

give them only one single takeaway

then i would humbly ask this of you go

home today take a pen and paper or

just type away on your laptop if that’s

your thing in life

and write down your eulogy or since the

audience

is really young over here that might be

a morose depressing thought so

write down say your 50th birthday speech

given by

somebody you really love who loves you

back right

what would you want it to say about you

who would you want to be what would you

want to be known for

what is the legacy that you want to

leave

behind i found

my purpose

[Music]

i find my purpose my calling in life

the reason that i can wake up and take

any amount of [ __ ] because that is

my [ __ ] is the [ __ ] that i have chosen

for

my life and it’s my intentional choice

but at the end of the day

you have to find your purpose in life

and ask yourself this one question

what is my dream what is my calling and

what does

success mean to me

in closing i would just like to share

with you a few lines that i paint or

rather they form themselves

when i was dwelling on this topic that

was given to me

i had a dream a dream i dreamt

of money of fame a home with a white

picket fence

i was on no less than the cover of time

magazine that tycoon [ __ ] that i always

thought

i wanted to be life

happened life happened

i almost got there i could almost

see it i could almost taste that success

it gave me a kick but it didn’t last

long

left i was feeling empty wondering what

in the world did i do it for

and so i stopped it all i took a pause

smelled the roses found what i’d lost

the me

that made me who i am those little

quirks that defined

my me brand

i lost it all thank heavens i did

because

when you lose everything then meaning is

what you’re left with and that’s when i

realized

it wasn’t what i was taught it ought to

be it ought to be what it needed it to

be

to be the real me

today i have a dream

this time it ain’t perfect it ain’t so

pretty it certainly

ain’t like the rest it is to spread my

word to share my thoughts

to teach through experience to light a

few

other hearts

they may say it’s not normal too

different

from common but hey i’m not common

because it’s at the edge of

normal that change lives on

to change is to grow to change is to

grow

to unlearn some of it all detox

your body mind and soul redefine

the ever changing norm thank you

you