if I could summarize the message of
every motivational speaker and self felt
book written in just three words it
would be to follow your passion and
follow your passion seems like a pretty
cool thing to say but often doesn’t make
sense like what if you’re passionate
about watching Game of Thrones or what
if you’re passionate about watching
friends that’s what most people our age
are passionate about 10 years ago I even
went to the extent of making an all good
group called we were on a break
dedicated to friends and every time I
was on a break I supposed translated
jokes out there until of course or could
itself take a break from all of us and
the biggest misconception about
following your passion is that it’s a
career decision not everyone can have a
job which they love but everyone can
lead a life which they love by making
use of their free time first ask
yourself does your passion necessarily
have to be a career does it like make
practical and financial sense to make
your passion into a career or can you
just follow your passion in your free
time everyone talks about following your
passion not enough people talk about how
to follow your passion and that’s what
I’m here to do today I wrote the book
sell phenomics which did pretty well and
I followed my passion of writing a book
and today I’m going to be talking about
the myths associated with following your
passion the biggest myth of following
your passion is never give up we keep
hearing never give up keep persevering
until you’ve until the finish line and
according to me everyone knows the
importance of hard work and perseverance
but what is just as important is to
learn when to give
and when you’re getting nothing out of
it the most important lesson that I
learned in my journey of writing and
publishing a book was the lesson of
learning how to give up and being
flexible with your dreams my dream
initially was to publish a book for an
American audience
I wrote 250 pages and I submitted my man
a few chapters of my book to more than
50 publishers in New York and I got
rejected from everywhere and most of
them ignored me but a few of them were
brutally honest and they told me a work
is great but to be honest no American is
interested in reading a self-help
written book written by an Indian unless
it’s about yoga and spirituality and at
first I was very disheartened and
frustrated but when I thought about it
again it made sense to me every major
self-help book written by an Indian
which has done well abroad is always
about yoga and spirituality so like
books by Deepak Chopra Sadhguru yogi
paramhans raj and books like monk who
sold as fairy that’s what works but my
books sell phenomics is not about Yoga
spirituality so while I was passionate
about my work
I was also practical about my work and I
rewrote the entire book for an Indian
audience and it didn’t turn out that bad
because V Indians we like to say if I
everything you go to Hal theorem and you
find pieces with pooja on it and I’m
pretty short if da Vinci Code was
written by a Punjabi he would name it
Vinci the code and retrospectively
turned out quite well because I
initially I always think of Indian
examples in the first code that’s
because I’m born and brought up in India
so I just in denies the entire book and
Donald Trump became Rahul Gandhi
Cristiano Ronaldo became v-rod Kohli and
I let Priyanka Chopra be remain Priyanka
Chopra so coming to the second myth is
think positive and we keep hearing think
positive but according to me we should
not just think positive we should think
critically we should think solution
oriented thinking positive has become
more of a justification mechanism to
justify the negatives rather than fight
the negatives so when I first told my
friends man I’m really frustrated I got
rejected by one more publisher he told
me don’t worry 28 publishers even
rejected someone like JK Rowling so I am
not supposed to worry just because 28
publishers rejected JK Rowling and
that’s the message that we get every day
and these stories of struggles and
failures of other people are meant to
inspire us and they do we do often get
inspired by these kind of stories but
another byproduct of these stories is
that failure is being taken very lightly
failure has almost become the norm and
the new in thing and people think that
the more you fail the cooler your
success story will sound till a few
years ago only a cockapoo you should
call herself a serial entrepreneur no
pun intended and now every third person
on LinkedIn calls themselves a serial
entrepreneur boasting about how many
startups he’s busted and we’ve adopted a
failure oriented mindset in which we
think that if we keep failing we will
succeed eventually but instead we must
adopt a success oriented mindset in
which we a question ourselves what can I
do differently so that I stop failing
and start succeeding
how can I change my startup business
model so that investors will be willing
to invest in my startup how can i
rewrite my manuscript so that a
publisher will be willing to publish my
book it’s not just failure but learning
from failure which leads you to success
and this brings me to the third myth of
following your passion which is before
you begin discuss your idea with your
friends and family and plan out
extensively and that’s what we all do
whenever we have any idea of a first
instinct is to discuss it with our
friends and family and they usually
provide us with constructive criticism
and this shows the flaws in our plan and
they usually say something like when you
tell them your idea they usually say
something like oh that sounds like a
great idea but you should be careful
about this oh that sounds amazing but
there are already many people doing that
and no pun intended but there’s always a
big butt between you and your dreams so
this sort of criticism that we get from
our friends and family may be helpful to
starting but often too much criticism
early on can be very demotivating the
strand will true lies my situation two
years ago when I was telling my idea to
my friends and family and back then six
months in a row day and night I was
studying for my I am entrance exams I
managed to do pretty well and somehow I
got into I am Bangalore and then out of
nowhere I decided not to go why because
I wanted to write a self-help comedy
book with hashtags and memes inspired by
AIB and tvf and I wanted to leave my job
in New York and come to India and leave
my work visa to write a book with having
no writing background so you can imagine
how ridiculous my idea was seeming him
wanting to quit my job I want to leave I
am to write a book and my friends and
family they could never imagine why how
any
one could be smart enough to get into I
am but stupid enough not to go and I try
to convince them you know Mark
Zuckerberg Steve Jobs all these big
people that we heard off the old
dropouts and I’m going one step further
and not even dropping or I’m not even
going in the first place
the only person who was supportive in my
entire journey was my mom and she told
me beta if you go to I am
you’ll write books like the other I am
authors and we all know what kind of
books diameters right so I she told me
don’t go to I am
and before you begin you’ll always feel
like you need to know a lot more before
you begin you want to plan out things
perfectly but you know what perfection
slows you down since there is no limit
to the amount you can plan a lot of us
get stuck in the planning stage and
after a point of time planning is
synonymous with procrastination and it’s
just an excuse to a white to begin you
don’t need to know every step in order
to begin just focus on the first couple
of steps and take it from there
you’ll understand how one thing leads to
the other and smaller successes leads to
bigger successes and this brings me to
the myth for which is there’s always
motivation around you
in this day and age there are more
demotivating things happening around us
rather than motivating so according to
me we have to proactively try and find
motivation rather than wait for
motivation to come to us it’s not
motivation but rather frequent
motivation which leads us to success two
years ago I changed my email password –
I am an author even though I was not an
author back then and every time I typed
my e-mail password I am an author it
motivated me to complete my book and
this particularly helped me when I was
constantly getting rejected by
publishers day in and day out and I
could see my so-called batchmate said I
am get into the top taken banking jobs
and at that time I thought maybe not
going to I am was a mistake but then I
typed my password my email I am an
author and it reminded me of why I
started in the first place and I
realized that if I had actually gone – I
am and not written the book I would have
a regret just by the way I’ve changed my
password since then so please don’t try
and hack my account I had first set my
password as I hope to be an author but
gmail said that my password is too weak
so I use innovative
so I used innovative ways like this to
take control of my motivation rather
than wait for motivation to come to me
and this brings me to the fifth myth
which is there will be your happily ever
after
and this is probably the most important
thing I would I want to say today it’s
because following your passion has
always been glorified by the media and
the people who usually follow their
passion they’re always portrayed as you
know they have well-settled jogs and
then they quit that and then they
struggle for many years and then they
somehow succeed and then they live
happily ever after
but the harsh truth is that the struggle
never ends the struggle keeps going on
and on just the way you can regret
giving up on your dreams you can also
regret chasing your dreams and not
taking a more realistic path I wrote the
book sell phenomics it did pretty well
it became a best-seller it even got
featured in the World Book Fair but now
what do I do like I don’t have any
concrete ideas for my second book and
like I’m pretty clueless like I don’t
know what the next step should be the
struggle never ends so you may want to
start a company and you managed to get
funding it may even make become
profitable
but the struggle doesn’t end there it
keeps continuing you may want to become
an actor and you get a break with a big
director and you may think that’s the
end of it all but no that’s not the end
this is the beginning the struggle keeps
continuing the hardest part often is not
to become successful is to remain
successful and when we try and make a
brave decision and we do it and if it
does not turn out that well it’s usually
a mistake but if we didn’t do it at all
it would be a regret our aim in life
should be to minimize regrets not to
minimize mistakes and I would like to
end my talk with a quote from my book
sell phenomics an average mind can think
of a brilliant idea
but it takes a brilliant mind to execute
one
do you want to settle for a stable
mediocre present or do you want to chase
a better future
which may not even come the choice is
yours
every motivational speaker and self felt
book written in just three words it
would be to follow your passion and
follow your passion seems like a pretty
cool thing to say but often doesn’t make
sense like what if you’re passionate
about watching Game of Thrones or what
if you’re passionate about watching
friends that’s what most people our age
are passionate about 10 years ago I even
went to the extent of making an all good
group called we were on a break
dedicated to friends and every time I
was on a break I supposed translated
jokes out there until of course or could
itself take a break from all of us and
the biggest misconception about
following your passion is that it’s a
career decision not everyone can have a
job which they love but everyone can
lead a life which they love by making
use of their free time first ask
yourself does your passion necessarily
have to be a career does it like make
practical and financial sense to make
your passion into a career or can you
just follow your passion in your free
time everyone talks about following your
passion not enough people talk about how
to follow your passion and that’s what
I’m here to do today I wrote the book
sell phenomics which did pretty well and
I followed my passion of writing a book
and today I’m going to be talking about
the myths associated with following your
passion the biggest myth of following
your passion is never give up we keep
hearing never give up keep persevering
until you’ve until the finish line and
according to me everyone knows the
importance of hard work and perseverance
but what is just as important is to
learn when to give
and when you’re getting nothing out of
it the most important lesson that I
learned in my journey of writing and
publishing a book was the lesson of
learning how to give up and being
flexible with your dreams my dream
initially was to publish a book for an
American audience
I wrote 250 pages and I submitted my man
a few chapters of my book to more than
50 publishers in New York and I got
rejected from everywhere and most of
them ignored me but a few of them were
brutally honest and they told me a work
is great but to be honest no American is
interested in reading a self-help
written book written by an Indian unless
it’s about yoga and spirituality and at
first I was very disheartened and
frustrated but when I thought about it
again it made sense to me every major
self-help book written by an Indian
which has done well abroad is always
about yoga and spirituality so like
books by Deepak Chopra Sadhguru yogi
paramhans raj and books like monk who
sold as fairy that’s what works but my
books sell phenomics is not about Yoga
spirituality so while I was passionate
about my work
I was also practical about my work and I
rewrote the entire book for an Indian
audience and it didn’t turn out that bad
because V Indians we like to say if I
everything you go to Hal theorem and you
find pieces with pooja on it and I’m
pretty short if da Vinci Code was
written by a Punjabi he would name it
Vinci the code and retrospectively
turned out quite well because I
initially I always think of Indian
examples in the first code that’s
because I’m born and brought up in India
so I just in denies the entire book and
Donald Trump became Rahul Gandhi
Cristiano Ronaldo became v-rod Kohli and
I let Priyanka Chopra be remain Priyanka
Chopra so coming to the second myth is
think positive and we keep hearing think
positive but according to me we should
not just think positive we should think
critically we should think solution
oriented thinking positive has become
more of a justification mechanism to
justify the negatives rather than fight
the negatives so when I first told my
friends man I’m really frustrated I got
rejected by one more publisher he told
me don’t worry 28 publishers even
rejected someone like JK Rowling so I am
not supposed to worry just because 28
publishers rejected JK Rowling and
that’s the message that we get every day
and these stories of struggles and
failures of other people are meant to
inspire us and they do we do often get
inspired by these kind of stories but
another byproduct of these stories is
that failure is being taken very lightly
failure has almost become the norm and
the new in thing and people think that
the more you fail the cooler your
success story will sound till a few
years ago only a cockapoo you should
call herself a serial entrepreneur no
pun intended and now every third person
on LinkedIn calls themselves a serial
entrepreneur boasting about how many
startups he’s busted and we’ve adopted a
failure oriented mindset in which we
think that if we keep failing we will
succeed eventually but instead we must
adopt a success oriented mindset in
which we a question ourselves what can I
do differently so that I stop failing
and start succeeding
how can I change my startup business
model so that investors will be willing
to invest in my startup how can i
rewrite my manuscript so that a
publisher will be willing to publish my
book it’s not just failure but learning
from failure which leads you to success
and this brings me to the third myth of
following your passion which is before
you begin discuss your idea with your
friends and family and plan out
extensively and that’s what we all do
whenever we have any idea of a first
instinct is to discuss it with our
friends and family and they usually
provide us with constructive criticism
and this shows the flaws in our plan and
they usually say something like when you
tell them your idea they usually say
something like oh that sounds like a
great idea but you should be careful
about this oh that sounds amazing but
there are already many people doing that
and no pun intended but there’s always a
big butt between you and your dreams so
this sort of criticism that we get from
our friends and family may be helpful to
starting but often too much criticism
early on can be very demotivating the
strand will true lies my situation two
years ago when I was telling my idea to
my friends and family and back then six
months in a row day and night I was
studying for my I am entrance exams I
managed to do pretty well and somehow I
got into I am Bangalore and then out of
nowhere I decided not to go why because
I wanted to write a self-help comedy
book with hashtags and memes inspired by
AIB and tvf and I wanted to leave my job
in New York and come to India and leave
my work visa to write a book with having
no writing background so you can imagine
how ridiculous my idea was seeming him
wanting to quit my job I want to leave I
am to write a book and my friends and
family they could never imagine why how
any
one could be smart enough to get into I
am but stupid enough not to go and I try
to convince them you know Mark
Zuckerberg Steve Jobs all these big
people that we heard off the old
dropouts and I’m going one step further
and not even dropping or I’m not even
going in the first place
the only person who was supportive in my
entire journey was my mom and she told
me beta if you go to I am
you’ll write books like the other I am
authors and we all know what kind of
books diameters right so I she told me
don’t go to I am
and before you begin you’ll always feel
like you need to know a lot more before
you begin you want to plan out things
perfectly but you know what perfection
slows you down since there is no limit
to the amount you can plan a lot of us
get stuck in the planning stage and
after a point of time planning is
synonymous with procrastination and it’s
just an excuse to a white to begin you
don’t need to know every step in order
to begin just focus on the first couple
of steps and take it from there
you’ll understand how one thing leads to
the other and smaller successes leads to
bigger successes and this brings me to
the myth for which is there’s always
motivation around you
in this day and age there are more
demotivating things happening around us
rather than motivating so according to
me we have to proactively try and find
motivation rather than wait for
motivation to come to us it’s not
motivation but rather frequent
motivation which leads us to success two
years ago I changed my email password –
I am an author even though I was not an
author back then and every time I typed
my e-mail password I am an author it
motivated me to complete my book and
this particularly helped me when I was
constantly getting rejected by
publishers day in and day out and I
could see my so-called batchmate said I
am get into the top taken banking jobs
and at that time I thought maybe not
going to I am was a mistake but then I
typed my password my email I am an
author and it reminded me of why I
started in the first place and I
realized that if I had actually gone – I
am and not written the book I would have
a regret just by the way I’ve changed my
password since then so please don’t try
and hack my account I had first set my
password as I hope to be an author but
gmail said that my password is too weak
so I use innovative
so I used innovative ways like this to
take control of my motivation rather
than wait for motivation to come to me
and this brings me to the fifth myth
which is there will be your happily ever
after
and this is probably the most important
thing I would I want to say today it’s
because following your passion has
always been glorified by the media and
the people who usually follow their
passion they’re always portrayed as you
know they have well-settled jogs and
then they quit that and then they
struggle for many years and then they
somehow succeed and then they live
happily ever after
but the harsh truth is that the struggle
never ends the struggle keeps going on
and on just the way you can regret
giving up on your dreams you can also
regret chasing your dreams and not
taking a more realistic path I wrote the
book sell phenomics it did pretty well
it became a best-seller it even got
featured in the World Book Fair but now
what do I do like I don’t have any
concrete ideas for my second book and
like I’m pretty clueless like I don’t
know what the next step should be the
struggle never ends so you may want to
start a company and you managed to get
funding it may even make become
profitable
but the struggle doesn’t end there it
keeps continuing you may want to become
an actor and you get a break with a big
director and you may think that’s the
end of it all but no that’s not the end
this is the beginning the struggle keeps
continuing the hardest part often is not
to become successful is to remain
successful and when we try and make a
brave decision and we do it and if it
does not turn out that well it’s usually
a mistake but if we didn’t do it at all
it would be a regret our aim in life
should be to minimize regrets not to
minimize mistakes and I would like to
end my talk with a quote from my book
sell phenomics an average mind can think
of a brilliant idea
but it takes a brilliant mind to execute
one
do you want to settle for a stable
mediocre present or do you want to chase
a better future
which may not even come the choice is
yours
Please follow and like us: