The mantra for selfworth.
if i asked you
what is your worth how would you respond
would it be in terms of your what you
consider character strengths
your aspirations your achievements what
if i told you
all of that counts but none of that
really matters
and now if i introduce myself to you as
hi i’m puja afridashani
i’m a young diplomat an inspiring author
an active blogger a daughter and a wife
what do you know from this description
about me
is it not just my sense of identity
vis-a-vis an audience
i want you to hold on to that thought
because i will come back to it
today i want to speak to you about my
journey of discovering self-worth
and what is self-worth here i’m going to
invoke
a dialogue from a hindi film which was
me favorite home
remember this dialogue from job we met
way back in 2007.
i think it is one dialogue of indian
cinema that truly encapsulates a spirit
that we
all must have but many of us often lack
i remember when this movie came out in
2007 my mother one day asked me
puja can you say this line and actually
mean it
i remember spending hours in front of
the mirror trying to you know
emulate it how kareena kapoor had said
it on screen
but i could never convince myself
because deep down inside
i was not my own favorite and i learned
to rationalize it in my head saying that
you know maybe it’s not the right time
and i will grow to start liking myself
she’s older she has experience and
anyone else might
and i will also grow into it what i
realized was that
as we grow up the notion of self-worth
and its importance
is drilled into all of us whether it’s
at school whether it’s by our parents
our
society at large we know that it is
important
but the locus of that is always external
when we talk about performing well
academically or you know
excelling at a hobby there is this
competitive haste where we are seeking
approval
from someone on the outside this was
again when i started thinking about it
back in school i was
oh i had just moved from syria and come
to delhi i had joined a new school i was
adjusting to a new city
and of course i was also at that point
of time being diagnosed with polycystic
ovarian disorder
which was because of my constant
battle with acne so i told myself you
know a young child
at that point of time is your social
acceptance and physical appearances are
paramount
i told myself the date of my face clears
up i’ll be pretty and that is the day
i’m going to feel you know good about
myself and i’ll draw my sense of
self-worth from it
but pcos is a stubborn disorder and you
learn to grow with it
and live with it so as i as time passed
i came into class 12 i realized
maybe it’s not that and i need to do
well in my life
and so what is it that is going to be
meaning to do well
i said i’m going to get into a good
college and that is going to make my
parents proud
and if they are proud i am going to draw
my sense of self-worth from that
a delhi kid i always thought of delhi
university and the dream was
to go into a undergraduate program from
saint stephen’s in economics honours
i i think i got a 95 odd percent
when in class 12. i was quite happy but
i remember my mother
saying on the phone the same day to
someone oh she’s done okay
and i suddenly realized oh so that this
is okay the nautilus this is not good
enough
so there against my plans of any sense
of self-worth out of that achievement
of course my mother later said that she
said it in the context that she knew
with that percent i would not get saint
stephens
anyhow i needed to look for a new way of
finding self-worth
so when i went to college i went to
sriram college of commerce i realized
that
you step out of the house and you
realize that acceptance has to come not
just from your parents but
society at large and what is it that is
the path set out for you
is you do good internships you get a
good package you get to
go to a good you know a good company
and that is how you will define yourself
going forward
but you know college is a time when you
also discover yourself
i realized that for the life of me i
could not continue doing accounting in
commerce
and that was not something i wanted to
pursue
i also discovered that i enjoyed social
work
i was working with a student’s
organization called students in free
enterprise
i think i believe it’s now called
enactus and i told myself
that you know i realized that every day
post class i was looking forward to go
and work with the rickshaw pullers on
campus because you were trying to
bring them into the fold of financial
inclusion in the formal credit sector
and so i realized oh so this is an area
of interest let me push my boundaries
and try and see what i can do here
i went on to do internships with ngos
with think tanks as well as the un
and as i was progressing this is all
still in college i was telling myself
see
my resume is building up this ought to
make me feel that i am accomplished at
my age and i should draw a sense of
self-worth
from a piece of paper it was still
external it was still trying to find my
myself outside i
and as it continued i took a gap year i
must admit that all the work that i did
did my resume did help me get into a
good school in columbia
uh in the us i joined columbia
university for a master’s program and i
was like
by leaving india this is it i have if i
may say all right
this is going to definitely be my source
of self-worth
that i am in an ivy league i have done a
good undergraduation and i am
on a path to being successful as they
would call it
but the next two years that colombia is
what i would say were truly
transformative
it is there i was picked up from a place
where the world view
and our social identity comes from where
we stand in your community
and you know whether it’s parents
whether it’s friends whether it’s
society at large and i was parachuted
into this world of individualism
i think it was the first time i really
realized that what are the you know the
subtleties of ethnicity or phrase of
gender
and what are the nuances when i say the
word self-worth
it was really i think much later in life
that i really understood what
may acne favorite home really means it
is my acne
favorite home and not to hariyapki
it is all about yourself it starts and
it starts and ends with you
so i started i told myself let me try
and discover the person that i am
and i don’t mean this in a narcissistic
sense of saying that oh who is for my
own self to figure out
who am i what do i like what do i not do
do i dislike
what is it that really moves me what am
i passionate about
now that these are some philosophical
questions also and perhaps the two years
masters was too short a time
for that evolution but the masters was
also a time when i discovered what were
my real academic interests
i found myself specializing in
international trade
international relations and issues of
migration
and i realized that to be able to learn
and grow in this field and as well as
contribute
the indian foreign service would be the
best platform way for me to do that
so i decided i’m going to come back and
write the civil services examination
now this was 2016.
i came back with this idea of course of
one you know these
notions very romantic ideas of self-love
and acceptance and on the other hand
this
very heavy terminology in terms of the
academic fields that i was
i come back and i decide okay i’m going
to write the exam
the next three years i can tell you were
living hell
they didn’t have to be but they were in
2016 i came back i
wrote the civil services examination i
gave the prelims i gave the mains
i went all the way to the interview and
you know somewhere
it is only human nature i thought okay
so i have you know i’ve been to sriram i
have done
an ivy league i have worked both in
india and abroad yeah this was happening
for me
but bam i felt flat on my face and that
is i think the beauty of that
examination
is that it’s the ultimate leveler i
didn’t qualify
i was nowhere in the list and i realized
oh so
they said i need to pick myself up and
do this again
i think it was my first failure
of course failure also external
achievement also external still
and i said okay i’m going to give it
again i gave the 2017 attempt
this time more with the vengeance that
how this examination failed me
and also still reeling under the sheer
shock items that i didn’t qualify
i didn’t even qualify the prelims in
so here i was two years into in into
india after my
under my post graduation and
two years down nowhere so to speak where
my aspirations lay
then i just and i realized that it was
not only that
i was not happy internally but i was not
making anyone outside happy either
my entire self-esteem five say was
completely shattered
and as is it is that once you have
issues mentally you also
see their manifestations physically a
myopic child i started having trouble
with my eyes
my i had gained weight studying for the
exam
so my pcos flared up and i was just
barely staying afloat if that’s the word
i mean i traversed the entire spectrum
from
self-pity that i’m a hard-working kid
why did this happen to me
to blame my to play to the blame game
where
whether it’s myself or my parents you
know i should have stayed back in the
states or done something different i
didn’t get the right guidance
in the process i made myself miss rupal
and everyone around me at least not very
happy
and to top all of this came the november
2017 incident
of dengue i think it was cathartic in a
lot of ways
for the first time i really understood
the limits of my own physical body
that you know when taking a bath becomes
a huge challenge is when you realize
that you can’t take everything
for granted because we tend to
especially our bodies at a young age
and the second thing i realized was that
it those three weeks that i was just
bedridden literally
it gave me a lot of time to think back
and relook at my life
they say hindsight is 20 20 and with
that wisdom let me tell you that
i thought about myself i said i’m a
young educated person
i am someone who has a family and
friends that really support me i have a
private sector job i was working
throughout while preparing for the civil
services
i am i have no existential crisis i’m
not financially insecure
and lastly at least literally i was
somewhere comfortable in my skin so what
was it that was troubling me so much
i remember one day my mother came and
said that you know
puja you need to let go of this
examination
you have to stop pinning all your hopes
and aspirations on one exam
and then any idea of success is not the
destination
letting this affect your self-worth
i don’t know if it was the fatigue of
the illness or it was the fact that i
had
you know for after months really
decluttered my mind
i decided that that’s it i’m going to
pick myself up and not look back
in what followed was that i really made
a cons
you know conscious effort to not mix
myself my achievements and my
aspirations with my sense of self-worth
it’s not easy it does not come naturally
what did i do i try to tell myself i’m
going to set different targets and goals
spread myself so to speak i realized i’m
going to start
physically i had gained some you know a
lot of weight while preparing i said i’m
going to shed that and become
fit i i lost 15 kgs by in 2018
i turned to my hobbies i said i enjoy
writing and traveling so i started my
own travel blog
i realized that i enjoyed i knew i’ve
always been in a dancer so i said i’m
going to pick up a new form of dance i
started learning salsa
what i was trying to do was basically
invest in myself
and think beyond one external factor
these were things that interested me and
i did them for myself
and the last thing yes i did was i said
i’ll write the exam again
but this time around it was not for some
sense of
social acceptance or social prestige
that is attached to this exam
that oh i need to prove my metal by
getting only if i qualify can i prove my
metal actually
but because i felt that i have
discovered that i am interested in this
field and i feel diplomacy is going to
be a way
i can learn and grow as an individual
and so i gave this and i told myself
that this
foreclosure because i’m not going to
give this exam again
i wrote the civil services examination
in 2018
and i can tell you it was really the
attitude and approach that really made
all the difference
so today if i if my introduction may
read something like an
all india rank 11 or a foreign indian
foreign service officer
i accept that that adds to my sense of
achievement
but nowhere is that the basis of my
sense of self-worth
and i really want to say this to
everyone out there because i have been
learning and i’m still in a pro i’m
still a work in progress
of to learn to love myself for all my
eccentricities
my shortcomings as well as my strengths
and everyone owes themselves this favor
of trying to invite this spirit of
self-love
and i want to just say that three things
that i think really helped me traverse
this distance
well one strong strong personal
relationship
i would say that for me whether my
mother has been my best friend
my husband who’s my childhood companion
or a close knit of
close-knit group of friends what it
helps is that when you know someone’s
got your back
it helps you you know face the knocks
that come your way
in life second is acceptance which is
both of yourself and your surroundings
life is not going to always be an upward
trajectory you are going to face downs
and ups and downs again
and for that you need to be resilient
and for resilience
acceptance is the first step and the
last
is abandoning any socials any sense of
guilt or self-pity why i say these two
things is because only when you
shed this do you really start owning
every decision of yours
and that is really when you
metaphorically become comfortable in
your own skin
remember that life is like much like a
globe and geography that if you start at
one point and you start walking
you’re never going to reach the edge you
will come right back
to where you started and so much in life
as well it begins and ends with you
so love yourselves embrace yourselves
and cherish yourselves
and now i’d like to close by introducing
myself
that i am pujya priyadarshni i am
someone i
call who is a nomad who learns stability
who loves to travel who loves food who
loves to write
and also loves to clean and has an
unhealthy
absolutely unhealthy love for deserts
and this
is my journey towards what my host in my
host country they call
ammo which is self-love thank you very
much namaskar