The success story of a girl from Bangalore
[Applause]
so
i have a couple of different things in
life
very early on i studied dance i’ve been
studying for over 10 years
later on i went on to witness india and
i have a lovely crown with me now
and i also post winning miss india got
into entrepreneurship
so there are all these different sort of
um
spaces that i got into and heroes that i
got into really taught me many many
things
so let’s begin with where i started
first
uh with dance specifically i got into
dancing in 2019
where i happen to see somebody in school
perform
excellently she was really good at what
she did so i asked her when did you
learn dance
she said i learned from this one
specific school in niger
they’re actually all over the country
they’re called shaman covers institute
so i was very decided with oh you know
there’s a new institute in town
i really want to go and try out what
this and so i went to my first class
so six months later after going to this
class
i think the people who haven’t edited
this class would know of it they have
a series of special performers they
comment through
and they perform for different events
across the country
so when i saw these people perform i was
awestruck
because the way they performed the kind
of musicality tonality perfection
it was it was just mind-blowing so i
told myself
i wanted to get here but back in 2009 if
my right hand moved
my left leg didn’t and my left hand
moved my head taken
so i honestly didn’t know how i was even
going to dance
and so i started going to classes that’s
the first thing i did
and six months after going into classes
they called me said okay why don’t you
at least try and audition
and so i went very confidently and you
know all pumped up saying i do want to
go for this competition
and then two weeks later they called and
said uh no you will not take
you and i felt rejected i said okay
maybe i am i really can’t dance but at
least i have fun doing it so i’m going
to try doing it again
so went up to class and i kept dancing
and i kept dancing and six months later
they called me yet again they said why
don’t you come and try audition again
and this time it’s oh it’s my second
time so maybe this time you know
my chances are good i’m going to try and
so i went for an audition
just that same all pumped up and food
saying yes i want to dance
and i got a call back two weeks later
saying
you didn’t get it um and this went on
for
eight times over two years where
all i heard is uh during it
but it was really the eighth times
and the fact that i did try eight times
that the eighth time the call came in
and said
sushi you got it this time and that
moment
made me literally get goosebumps
and so there are quite a bit of
learnings that i had
through this journey right the first one
saying that if you never really drive
don’t even take that first step you
never really know where you’re headed
so it’s very important that in any
journey that i take going forward
as scared as i am to do it i at least
take that first
date a lovely birthday and so
i went on to my second journey right
um and this was miss india now all of
you see me here today and you might have
your own perceptions of me but let me
just quickly take you back
to a couple of years ago that was me
that was me and my friends placed on a
sleepover now
looking at that girl i would have never
thought that this girl could ever become
a miss india
i would go to college wearing my
brother’s t-shirts comfortable jeans
and slippers on my phone that’s about it
i knew nothing about beauty i knew
nothing about entertainment
and so it made me wonder at that point
saying
how can that girl of all people in the
world become a miss india
but then here i am right so how did that
really happen
a friend of mine said you know you
should really give it a try and again i
was scared i was worried
somehow she managed to convince me
saying i should go for this audition
and i did i cleared the first round of
audition i went to bombay
i cleared the second round of audition
and i got into the main fashion
right that was me barely knowing how to
walk in my heels
owning one pair of black dress because
that’s sort of the mandate for the
audition
and i probably had one eyeliner and one
lipstick
now i don’t think that’s good enough to
become beauty queen but there i was with
a big dream in my heart
and probably four things in my you know
little strawley
to make this dream happen after i got
through all of these rounds of audition
i ended up with this beautiful group
of 21 people i don’t even think you guys
can see me then because i was
practically trying to hide
so if you see that picture there are 21
beautiful girls
who knew exactly what they were doing
and i was competing with these girls
how with my one dress one pair of
needles one lipstick and one liner
how could i even do it so i walked into
this competition
petrified i was so scared of what i was
going to be doing
and i think on the day of the winner
it actually hit me i was never going to
win
because i entered the pageant unprepared
i had no clue what was happening i was
completely unaware
of what i was leaving the pageant but
i was set right this one year
what it really taught me though is what
all of these other 20 girls did
because three of these girls did end up
winning so what is
what is it that you know they did
differently from what i did
and what can i do what can i do
differently and learn
and win so on the day of the pageant i
actually did
this is back in 2015 and i went back
home
crying so i went home crying
and i told myself maybe i’m not pretty
maybe
i don’t know how to talk on stage i’m
still very scared of talking on stage
but back then
i was probably 100 times more scared so
i don’t know how to talk on stage
i didn’t think i was pretty i don’t know
how to dress up but i really wanted to
win miss india so
how was i going to make this dream
happen
it took me four months to really just
get
over my own misery my own sulking
my own you know pulling myself down
performance late i told myself so you
think if you keep sucking at the problem
you’re never actually going to do
anything about it so four months later i
picked up myself and i said
i am going to win i do not care
what it takes but i am going to win and
then
started my eight month long journey on
trying to win miss india
all over again but this time i did it a
little bit differently
because i had the experience of what
these 20 girls had taught me
so i started off firstly by writing it
down
whenever i have a dream i have this
tendency now
many years later to write it down it
helps me really remember what i started
why i started it and at the hardest
times why not to give up
so i write down my dreams because they
remind me
to not give up they remind me why i
started so i started
with writing a very grand dream i
imagined that i was standing in the
finale stage
and somebody was announcing saying the
winner of femina miss india 2016
is sushi krishna right and that is
eight months before i won and after i
wrote that down
i started to take what all these girls
taught me
in terms of styling in terms of walking
in terms of all the different things
that you need to be imagined
winner and broken down then as i was
going to the gym
i started learning how to walk in heels
i bought more pair of heels so now i own
more than one
i own more lipsticks i own more dresses
i was a little bit more confident with
my public speaking
and it was eight months later that i
went back for another round of audition
with miss india
now i walked in there and i was just as
scared as
all the other 20 contestants but now we
have 20 new contestants
and then in bombay i got selected again
this time my experience at the balance
was very
i felt like i wasn’t being you know i
wasn’t confused
i knew how to handle myself i knew what
it was up and
just the eight months of preparation
allowed me to take that one month of the
competition
much more at ease and then
the day of the finale came i was just as
scared as the first day
i walked on stage and just before i
walked on stage
i told myself you know sir you’ve done
everything you can
you can’t do anything more just go on
stage
walk well smile well answer your
questions well
and leave everything else up there
and so it did and walked on stage so
eight months later
the last five minutes of the competition
i did end up learning
the winner of eminem as india is sushil
krishna
so these two experiences taught me
that for any goal that you really have
or anything that you want to achieve you
can really break
things down into multiple different
steps and if you do follow them at some
level
your chances of becoming successful or
your chances of getting closer to your
goal
becomes higher so i’m just going to
quickly share with you
what those learnings were for me and i
continue to implement them
say in my business in everything else
that i do in life
beyond miss india so the first thing as
i mentioned to you
is really to define your goal most
people
have difficulty getting started because
they are unable to define what their
goal is so when i say define
it means clarity to the last team
right what do i want to do when do i
want to do it
and what do i want to achieve and once
you define it
write it down and stick it in a place
where you can see it every day
the minute you write down your goal it
becomes easy to understand what are your
roadblocks right
so now if i want to say
i want to write a book for example now
i don’t have certain skills to write a
book but there might be a hundred other
things i don’t know but the minute i
know that i want to write a book
those road paths on roadblocks become
much easier for me to identify
these noteblocks are usually of two
nature one
which is an interesting intrinsic
roadblock and one which is an extrinsic
roadblock
an intrinsic one is one which is largely
defined by you
yourself i can’t do it i don’t have the
money i’m from a small town
i won’t be able to do it extrinsic
factors about this beyond you
beyond your control that usually come in
the way
now you need to be prepared for both
then the third step that i would say is
that the minute you take a very big goal
more often than not we all tend to get
very scared of it
we are petrified will i ever be able to
reach there
right and so it’s very important to
break this
big goal down into smaller steps so that
we approach it
with much more needs so the way i break
up my goals
is i firstly build smaller milestones
that help me achieve this goal
and then define incremental actions that
i can implement
on a daily basis on a repetitive mode to
be able to get closer to there
and the third one is i define a timeline
the minute i define a timeline
i know as i’m getting closer to the
timeline that i need to start doing it
much better or much faster
the fourth one is practicing resilience
now
if anybody tells you that you can become
anything overnight don’t believe them
they all have a story of at least six to
ten years
of hard work and perseverance that goes
behind it
nobody wakes up and achieves anything
overnight
there is a lot of practice there is a
lot of
you know roadblocks that come your way
there are things that don’t work out
and you have to be able to persevere
through it you have to be able to keep
pushing yourself
through it so i always say that
if you deliberately practice what you
need to do
it will always supersede the talent that
you have
right so keep practicing what you want
to do
deliberately practicing the difference
is more then you know the purpose of why
you’re practicing
and then it always wins over somebody
who thinks they’re more talented
right and then obviously don’t give up
the more
easily you give up the further away you
go from your goal so
every time you fail just keep getting
back up and keep doing it
keep doing it and keep doing it’s not
easy to give up after the first step
second time you’re like oh maybe i don’t
want to do it but
you know when you keep doing it over and
over again
that’s when your success comes closer to
you
so malcolm gladwell once said 1000 hours
is the amount of practice
you must put in to attain mastery 1000
hours is a long time
if you practice for three to four hours
a day
that means 10 years right so
you really need to put in a lot of work
a lot of effort to be able to
get closer to what you’re aiming at
so this one specifically is something
that i want to share with my millennial
friends my younger friends
a sustainable lifestyle is just
something that i think our generation is
moving extremely far away from
when i see a sustainable lifestyle it
means simple things like eating food
going to sleep getting a little bit of
workout meeting your friends
having healthy social life right in our
generation we want to get everything
really quick now the challenge with
getting everything really quick
is that it doesn’t last
it doesn’t sustain so the minute you see
the success stories
of people who have been there and done
that
time and again year after year year
after year
let’s take examples of sports people
right
michael jordan the the sisters the
million sisters
so all these people have been successful
over a long period of time and when you
go back and hear
any of their stories it’s because
they’re very mindful of what they eat
how they take care of themselves how
much of a workout they do
what they put in their body everything
so it’s very important for
each one of us to to sort of go after
our goals
keeping in mind that our sustainability
is also equally important
so eat well sleep well work out and stay
healthy
the other thing that people i think
don’t really realize many times
is the our success
is a sum of the people
who come on that journey with us so it’s
very important
to pick these people right or at least
to be aware of the people
who are in this journey with you for me
you are the sum of the five people who
are closest to you
and jim ron has said that so i’d really
like to believe that
now the reason why this is so important
is because
the people in your life influence your
daily decisions
how you look at problem solving how do
you look
at you know if you fail how do you go
back and try the other people
who are subconsciously insane so it’s
very important that these people
are in line with you and your goal as
much as you are
the second bit is to have a great mentor
a mentor is one
who sort of sees what you can’t see in
your
navigate your decisions a lot of times
when you are on different journeys
we know very limited right because we’ve
done it we’re much newer to the field
we’re much
newer to what we’re doing but the reason
you have mentors is because they have
seen obtained success stories they know
rights and wrongs from other people
and hence can avoid you from doing as
much
wrong as possible and put you back on
the right track
so these are the people you really need
to pick your five closest folks
your coach your mentor or your
inspiration
the last bit of advice in my mind is
that every time you fail you have to get
back up
so in my life in 2009 when i wasn’t able
to get into that dance school
i felt that i failed and i felt that i
failed eight times
and then when i came for miss india in
2015 and i didn’t win
i felt my i am a two-time entrepreneur
the reason i’m a two-time entrepreneur
is because my first venture failed
and i came back up and i’m doing it all
over again so
just don’t let your failure get to you
take learnings from it understand what
you can do better the next time
and if it really is your goal go after
it
yet again so having said this
i would say that talent
versus you know somebody working very
hard somebody who knows how to
get uh get working on their success i
feel that
working hard always wins over talent so
never
shy away from your goal because you
don’t think you’re talented enough
your hard work and your grip and your
perseverance can
always overpower talent and so
if if a girl like me from bangkok can do
it
i believe that each one can do it
thank you