so welcome everyone now as you can
imagine from that introduction I get
asked a number of questions pretty often
what are you doing here what is what do
you do here is there something wrong
with you all these questions and you
know I’ve got my mic and answers my
little jokes I’ll say that you know I’m
a I’ll say I’m a d-list Bulgarian
celebrity and that’s what I do you know
I’ll have to vehemently deny that I work
for the CIA
I really don’t but people don’t believe
me but when I say you know okay I I work
for this company I’m a d-list celebrity
because of my podcast or whatever
there’s a little grain of truth there
and it’s not the celebrity part it’s the
weirdness part the the kind of
improbable part because if there’s one
thing I can say about my life here in
Bulgaria is that there’s been
tremendously improbable and why is that
special life that interesting and what
does that mean for you well you could
imagine when I think back to when I was
your age when I was in high school just
starting University I was not imagining
the life that I have now I did not
imagine I would live in Bulgaria that I
would work with startups or or have a
podcast or any of this stuff and to be
honest at the time I didn’t imagine a
very happy life I was in high school
starting University I honestly didn’t
really think I’d be happy it was a hard
time for me and shortly after I started
University I faced a lot of family
tragedies my father committed suicide
and he wasn’t the first of my family to
do so and
I looked at all these things I really
thought that well that’s my life you
know I can’t escape genetics I can’t
escape family I don’t have a choice
and yeah I was suffering from depression
but there was something else I was
suffering from that was maybe even more
crippling at the moment it was a lack of
imagination
when I say imagination what do I mean
I’m not talking about the ability to you
know tell a good story or to draw
something off the top of your head I’m
talking about the ability to imagine
your own future to imagine the kind of
lives that you could live the kind of
things that you could do because what
was so crippling what was so difficult
about that time was just that that I
couldn’t imagine a different life for
myself
certainly not the one that I have now
and at the time I was also doing what
I’m sure a lot of you are starting to do
thinking about a career what am I gonna
do with my life I wanted to be a history
professor lucky for me that is a career
path that doesn’t necessarily require a
lot of imagination right you do your
bachelor’s you do your masters you do
your PhD you get a job at a university
so that’s what I did
I check the boxes I got all those
degrees I wrote about Alexander stumble
we ski for two years because you know
why not and at the end of those years I
just finished up a Fulbright research
grant right here in Sofia I had an offer
to do a PhD at a good school but there’s
a bit of a problem first
the university was like yeah we don’t we
don’t have a lot of money to pay you or
anything and also we’re in London it’s
kind of expensive but there was another
problem I read maybe one too many
articles about how hard it is to be a
professor these days about adjuncts and
pay things and all this added up to you
know I said
maybe this isn’t what I want to do
and so just like that five years I had
been going down the same path and like
that that wasn’t what I was going to do
anymore
and I was terrified
or at least that’s probably what you’d
expect me to say actually I wasn’t
it felt great it felt amazing I was a
happiest I’d been in years just at that
moment when I was giving up on the
biggest dream I’d ever had
so why well because just at that moment
my thought wasn’t oh my god I failed aw
I didn’t do it I didn’t
my thought was wait wait a minute wait a
minute
so if I’m not gonna go down this path
well that means I could do pretty much
anything I I could do lots of stuff and
and I can take the time to figure out
what kind of stuff I want to do and now
that sounds pretty obvious but it’s
really easy to go your entire life and
never think that way and so what was I
experiencing I was experiencing
imagination maybe for the first time I
was imagining all the different things
that I could do thought well I could
live in Thailand I could live right here
in Bulgaria you know I could still try
to be a professor but like I I could
also be a business consultant I could be
a voice-over artist I could be a high
school teacher in suddenly realizing
that I could actually just take the time
and figure all these things out was the
most liberating thing I had ever
experienced in my life but maybe some of
you were thinking yep that sounds great
but how real easy is it really to kind
of explore all these things you know you
need education you need skills so that’s
the kind of second point I want to make
because a core part of it allowed me to
feel that way and allowed me to be
flexible like that was that in my
education I hadn’t just studied you know
early 20th century radical agrarian
movements in the Balkans and their
connection to nationalism I had studied
how to give a speech I’d studied how to
write an essay I’d studied how to do
research I’d studied how to think like a
scientist to think like an artist I got
in a solid liberal arts education that
taught me lots of what I think of as
kind of course skills and so the reason
I could feel this way the reason I could
feel excited about all the careers all
the things I could try was that I knew
that there were lots of jobs that I
could do that I had these core skills
that I could apply to doing lots of
things and that’s something I wanted to
explain to you all as you’re thinking
about your education your career is what
you’re going to do that it can be so so
frightening to think well this is what I
want to do I’m going to get that
education but what if it doesn’t work
out then I won’t
education I won’t be prepared for the
job market what’s gonna happen my
parents will be very mad but really if
you kind of think about your education
this way if you make sure you learn a
bunch of kind of course skills that you
can apply to lots of different jobs then
you’re gonna be fine in fact you’re
gonna be probably a lot more excited
about trying different things than
someone who just got that one degree
that you can do one single thing with
and so to maybe help you visualize this
let me give you some examples of some
things that I did once I kind of opened
my mind to this imagining what I could
do and trying lots of different jobs and
careers and seeing what was interesting
so the podcast you heard a mention you
know when I decided not to do the PhD I
I still loved bulgarian history and I
wanted to engage with it so I said okay
why not create this history podcast so I
created it and as I recorded and
recorded and recorded I got pretty good
at that so I started doing little side
gigs doing voice acting I you know
voiceovers for a documentary or a
commercial or something and as I did
that I started to get to know the people
working in these companies I started
helping them write scripts helping them
build some the ideas of whatever
projects they were creating then one day
friend of mine who works at one of these
stunning he says hey my company I we
want to enter this documentary film
contest in the US to make a five-minute
environmental documentary you want to
join sure that sounds cool so that’s
what we did I I wrote a screenplay
called the Bulgarian solution to climate
change we made the film and we swept the
awards we won like half the awards in
this category two Film Festival and
suddenly I was looking and saying wait
wait how did I how did I end up writing
an award-winning screenplay like who’s
that guy That’s not me I never did that
kind of stuff but I got there because I
was open to trying these new things to
developing these skills and to always
looking out for new ways to apply them
and I ended up doing stuff that was so
meaningful and felt amazing and
interesting one more quick example I
also do a lot of writing because I
learned how to write
in university a friend of mine was
working on this really cool project
called the Africa Prize for engineering
it’s funded by the UK government where
they go and they teach a bunch of
African African entrepreneurs how to
kind of start businesses and so he had
this idea to take me and a few other
people along for the ride and so we went
to Nairobi Kenya and we interviewed 30
or 40 entrepreneurs from all over Africa
and got their stories and how they
succeeded in how they failed we
transcribed all of them and we wrote
almost a hundred practical lessons about
how to start a business in Africa based
on the experiences of Africans who
started businesses in Africa and I got
to work on this in Kenya for a month it
was amazing I mean who would have
thought that you know living in Bulgaria
would have brought me there and that I
could work on something so impactful and
so interesting I mean I still
occasionally mails from someone who’s
explaining that hey you know I’ve got
this this kind of yucca farm in Tanzania
and I have this business problem do you
have any ideas and I’ll go into all the
lessons we wrote and say yeah I think
this one this one and this one might
help you out and thinking like I’m
helping a farmer in Tanzania right now
like that’s super weird but again it was
imagination it was making those
connections meeting people and looking
for cool things to work on and always
being open to try something new that got
me there
so I kind of think about all this
together and think back on where I was
when I was graduating high school how
much pain I was in how hard life was and
my complete inability to imagine
anything approaching the kind of
satisfaction and happiness and
fulfillment that I have today and
thinking about that I wanted you guys to
imagine this that you may think you have
some idea of what your life is going to
be right now but you don’t you have no
idea I think for nearly everyone out
there life is just this the most
improbable thing and that if you can
kind of accept that and if you can
embrace this idea that you should be
imaginative and you should think big
thoughts and wide thoughts about what
kind of like you could have then I don’t
you’d be amazed what you can overcome so
in conclusion I want you all to sometime
maybe not today but maybe before you
start going up to university or whatever
you’re gonna do after school to try that
experiment to try taking a moment to
think
completely openly about what your life
might be and then to stick with that and
to always be open to trying new things
and learning new things and seeing where
they’re gonna take you because I
guarantee you it’s gonna be somewhere
amazing alright thank you all so very
much
[Applause]
imagine from that introduction I get
asked a number of questions pretty often
what are you doing here what is what do
you do here is there something wrong
with you all these questions and you
know I’ve got my mic and answers my
little jokes I’ll say that you know I’m
a I’ll say I’m a d-list Bulgarian
celebrity and that’s what I do you know
I’ll have to vehemently deny that I work
for the CIA
I really don’t but people don’t believe
me but when I say you know okay I I work
for this company I’m a d-list celebrity
because of my podcast or whatever
there’s a little grain of truth there
and it’s not the celebrity part it’s the
weirdness part the the kind of
improbable part because if there’s one
thing I can say about my life here in
Bulgaria is that there’s been
tremendously improbable and why is that
special life that interesting and what
does that mean for you well you could
imagine when I think back to when I was
your age when I was in high school just
starting University I was not imagining
the life that I have now I did not
imagine I would live in Bulgaria that I
would work with startups or or have a
podcast or any of this stuff and to be
honest at the time I didn’t imagine a
very happy life I was in high school
starting University I honestly didn’t
really think I’d be happy it was a hard
time for me and shortly after I started
University I faced a lot of family
tragedies my father committed suicide
and he wasn’t the first of my family to
do so and
I looked at all these things I really
thought that well that’s my life you
know I can’t escape genetics I can’t
escape family I don’t have a choice
and yeah I was suffering from depression
but there was something else I was
suffering from that was maybe even more
crippling at the moment it was a lack of
imagination
when I say imagination what do I mean
I’m not talking about the ability to you
know tell a good story or to draw
something off the top of your head I’m
talking about the ability to imagine
your own future to imagine the kind of
lives that you could live the kind of
things that you could do because what
was so crippling what was so difficult
about that time was just that that I
couldn’t imagine a different life for
myself
certainly not the one that I have now
and at the time I was also doing what
I’m sure a lot of you are starting to do
thinking about a career what am I gonna
do with my life I wanted to be a history
professor lucky for me that is a career
path that doesn’t necessarily require a
lot of imagination right you do your
bachelor’s you do your masters you do
your PhD you get a job at a university
so that’s what I did
I check the boxes I got all those
degrees I wrote about Alexander stumble
we ski for two years because you know
why not and at the end of those years I
just finished up a Fulbright research
grant right here in Sofia I had an offer
to do a PhD at a good school but there’s
a bit of a problem first
the university was like yeah we don’t we
don’t have a lot of money to pay you or
anything and also we’re in London it’s
kind of expensive but there was another
problem I read maybe one too many
articles about how hard it is to be a
professor these days about adjuncts and
pay things and all this added up to you
know I said
maybe this isn’t what I want to do
and so just like that five years I had
been going down the same path and like
that that wasn’t what I was going to do
anymore
and I was terrified
or at least that’s probably what you’d
expect me to say actually I wasn’t
it felt great it felt amazing I was a
happiest I’d been in years just at that
moment when I was giving up on the
biggest dream I’d ever had
so why well because just at that moment
my thought wasn’t oh my god I failed aw
I didn’t do it I didn’t
my thought was wait wait a minute wait a
minute
so if I’m not gonna go down this path
well that means I could do pretty much
anything I I could do lots of stuff and
and I can take the time to figure out
what kind of stuff I want to do and now
that sounds pretty obvious but it’s
really easy to go your entire life and
never think that way and so what was I
experiencing I was experiencing
imagination maybe for the first time I
was imagining all the different things
that I could do thought well I could
live in Thailand I could live right here
in Bulgaria you know I could still try
to be a professor but like I I could
also be a business consultant I could be
a voice-over artist I could be a high
school teacher in suddenly realizing
that I could actually just take the time
and figure all these things out was the
most liberating thing I had ever
experienced in my life but maybe some of
you were thinking yep that sounds great
but how real easy is it really to kind
of explore all these things you know you
need education you need skills so that’s
the kind of second point I want to make
because a core part of it allowed me to
feel that way and allowed me to be
flexible like that was that in my
education I hadn’t just studied you know
early 20th century radical agrarian
movements in the Balkans and their
connection to nationalism I had studied
how to give a speech I’d studied how to
write an essay I’d studied how to do
research I’d studied how to think like a
scientist to think like an artist I got
in a solid liberal arts education that
taught me lots of what I think of as
kind of course skills and so the reason
I could feel this way the reason I could
feel excited about all the careers all
the things I could try was that I knew
that there were lots of jobs that I
could do that I had these core skills
that I could apply to doing lots of
things and that’s something I wanted to
explain to you all as you’re thinking
about your education your career is what
you’re going to do that it can be so so
frightening to think well this is what I
want to do I’m going to get that
education but what if it doesn’t work
out then I won’t
education I won’t be prepared for the
job market what’s gonna happen my
parents will be very mad but really if
you kind of think about your education
this way if you make sure you learn a
bunch of kind of course skills that you
can apply to lots of different jobs then
you’re gonna be fine in fact you’re
gonna be probably a lot more excited
about trying different things than
someone who just got that one degree
that you can do one single thing with
and so to maybe help you visualize this
let me give you some examples of some
things that I did once I kind of opened
my mind to this imagining what I could
do and trying lots of different jobs and
careers and seeing what was interesting
so the podcast you heard a mention you
know when I decided not to do the PhD I
I still loved bulgarian history and I
wanted to engage with it so I said okay
why not create this history podcast so I
created it and as I recorded and
recorded and recorded I got pretty good
at that so I started doing little side
gigs doing voice acting I you know
voiceovers for a documentary or a
commercial or something and as I did
that I started to get to know the people
working in these companies I started
helping them write scripts helping them
build some the ideas of whatever
projects they were creating then one day
friend of mine who works at one of these
stunning he says hey my company I we
want to enter this documentary film
contest in the US to make a five-minute
environmental documentary you want to
join sure that sounds cool so that’s
what we did I I wrote a screenplay
called the Bulgarian solution to climate
change we made the film and we swept the
awards we won like half the awards in
this category two Film Festival and
suddenly I was looking and saying wait
wait how did I how did I end up writing
an award-winning screenplay like who’s
that guy That’s not me I never did that
kind of stuff but I got there because I
was open to trying these new things to
developing these skills and to always
looking out for new ways to apply them
and I ended up doing stuff that was so
meaningful and felt amazing and
interesting one more quick example I
also do a lot of writing because I
learned how to write
in university a friend of mine was
working on this really cool project
called the Africa Prize for engineering
it’s funded by the UK government where
they go and they teach a bunch of
African African entrepreneurs how to
kind of start businesses and so he had
this idea to take me and a few other
people along for the ride and so we went
to Nairobi Kenya and we interviewed 30
or 40 entrepreneurs from all over Africa
and got their stories and how they
succeeded in how they failed we
transcribed all of them and we wrote
almost a hundred practical lessons about
how to start a business in Africa based
on the experiences of Africans who
started businesses in Africa and I got
to work on this in Kenya for a month it
was amazing I mean who would have
thought that you know living in Bulgaria
would have brought me there and that I
could work on something so impactful and
so interesting I mean I still
occasionally mails from someone who’s
explaining that hey you know I’ve got
this this kind of yucca farm in Tanzania
and I have this business problem do you
have any ideas and I’ll go into all the
lessons we wrote and say yeah I think
this one this one and this one might
help you out and thinking like I’m
helping a farmer in Tanzania right now
like that’s super weird but again it was
imagination it was making those
connections meeting people and looking
for cool things to work on and always
being open to try something new that got
me there
so I kind of think about all this
together and think back on where I was
when I was graduating high school how
much pain I was in how hard life was and
my complete inability to imagine
anything approaching the kind of
satisfaction and happiness and
fulfillment that I have today and
thinking about that I wanted you guys to
imagine this that you may think you have
some idea of what your life is going to
be right now but you don’t you have no
idea I think for nearly everyone out
there life is just this the most
improbable thing and that if you can
kind of accept that and if you can
embrace this idea that you should be
imaginative and you should think big
thoughts and wide thoughts about what
kind of like you could have then I don’t
you’d be amazed what you can overcome so
in conclusion I want you all to sometime
maybe not today but maybe before you
start going up to university or whatever
you’re gonna do after school to try that
experiment to try taking a moment to
think
completely openly about what your life
might be and then to stick with that and
to always be open to trying new things
and learning new things and seeing where
they’re gonna take you because I
guarantee you it’s gonna be somewhere
amazing alright thank you all so very
much
[Applause]
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