you
I’m to share with you the story of a
teenager a young girl who stayed with
her parents in a small Indian town
she had just appeared for her 10th grade
exams the first board exam of her life
she was a fairly good student who topped
her class till the 9th grade and so she
expected to get a good result but to her
surprise and shock what she found out
was that she failed her 10th board exam
you could well imagine how she must have
felt it’s like you’re the smartest
player on your school ticket team you
get to play for the state team and you
get out on the first ball see it fail in
a subject called Hindi a national
language and what Sheikh scored was a ap
100 you could well imagine how she must
have felt you go out to play you get out
on the first ball and that two in the
front of your home crowd
not only this what happened was she
became a but of all family grapevine and
all school jokes it was brutal
it was devastating for a 15 year old her
parents are sternly if she had actually
messed up her paper with all her
confidence she said no when they were
sure that the girl had not done anything
wrong they took her to the board
headquarters at New Delhi when they
reached there they found out long
serpentine queues outside the board
headquarters there were a lot of
students who faced the same faith when
they tried speaking to them they met a
boy who had scored a zero on his math
paper when he expected a full hundred
they met another girl who expected more
than 90% in the chemistry paper but what
she had scored was a meager 47 but then
it’s a board exam and the mark sheet is
the universal truth the only allowed
measure to all of them was to apply for
evaluation that is what all of them did
and came back to a long wait as expected
the revaluation result then come in time
and the teenager had to go for the
supplementary exam guess what at the
supplementary exam center she was the
only candidate who had gotten a
supplementary in Hindi the invigilator
looked at her critically she felt really
humiliated you could imagine how she
must have felt it’s like you go out in
the cricket arena and you are about to
catch a ball and suddenly there’s
another fielder who comes rams into you
and you miss out on the catch for no
fault of yours anyways the supplementary
result came out and she scored a 75 in
the supplementary exam and as a result
what happened was that she cleared her
tenth board exam but with the
supplementary marksheet
attached to her original mark sheet the
story isn’t over yet after four and a
half grueling months she received an
envelope from the Board of Secondary
Education and the envelope contained a
marriage certificate with a new mark
sheet the marriage certificate declared
that she was among the point zero zero
one percent of the meritorious students
in the whole country that year and the
new mark sheet stated that her original
marks were 91 100 when she saw that mark
sheet she was reminded of all that
happened to her in the last four and a
half months she had changed a school she
had lost some friends she had lost some
confidence and some weight – but what
she had gained was a big lesson to face
the failure without fail the story isn’t
over yet either
do you remember the boy who it’s called
a zero on his math paper and he was
completely grief-stricken when the girl
met him on the board headquarters when
she went there she was curious to find
out if the boy also brought his results
changed or something would happen for
him so she tried to get in touch with
the boy and she found out that the
result had changed but the boy was not
there to receive the news he took his
life and gave in to the external
pressures he didn’t believe in himself
but believed in those who didn’t believe
in him
I know this story very well because I’ve
lived this story I am
teenager whose perspective about life
and about herself changed when she was a
fifteen-year-old
I didn’t know the word authenticity then
but I have lived in the spirit of this
world since then this whole incident got
me in touch with myself I learned about
myself more than what I would have
otherwise known when I got a 18100 there
were a lot of people who wanted me to
feel sad and guilty when I obtained a
9100 the same group of people wanted me
to feel super excited but when I thought
about it when I dived deep into myself I
realized that I neither felt guilty nor
I felt super excited and that held me to
know and discover myself better when I
tried to find out I realized that I
loved new experiences I loved myself for
loving journeys more than destination
and most importantly I found out that I
can laugh at myself whenever people
started talking about this failure of
mine I would start talking about it
first and started to laugh about it and
as I laughed when I spoke about my
failure
it made me comfortable with the concept
of failure and that made me confident
whenever I think about that boy I always
feel that I would have never done what
he did had he faced it with a little
confidence and a little humor he would
be giving a TED talk somewhere today if
you want to grow in life discover
yourself love yourself for who you are
and try to learn to laugh at yourself
because self-awareness makes you your
own friend philosopher and guide when I
discovered and befriended self-awareness
I realized that I loved being an
entrepreneur I’m a startup enthusiast
and I’m a serial entrepreneur I consider
my marriage to be my first startup
because at an age of 20 I
decided to marry someone whom everyone
opposed and after 21 years today the
venture is successful and is fairly
evaluated – apart from my two other
business ventures that I’m running
successfully at the moment another
learning that I had from this experience
of my 10th grade was in human behavior
during those four and a half months lot
of my family and friends intentionally
or unintentionally said things to me
which hurt me which humiliated me I
wanted to give it back to them I wanted
to fight it back but I controlled my
urge of anger spitting I controlled my
impulse to mirror their own behavior I
learned to self-regulate authenticity is
not about saying out loud whatever your
head says or whatever your heart feels
authenticity is about being open being
comfortable with criticism and being
sensitive to others during my MBA days
one of our professors gave us a small
experiment to do all the students were
given different sentences and they were
told to try and speak those sentences to
different people and report record their
responses the sentence given to me was I
don’t like you I was expected to go and
try this sentence on different people so
I went to one of my friends and told her
I don’t like you immediately came the
response even I don’t like you fine
I went to my another friend and said the
same thing to her listen I don’t like
you
and she got concerned she said why what
happened did I do something wrong did I
hurt you
I didn’t know how to respond to that so
I said I genuinely do not know so she
said find out and let me know okay I
went to this amazing friend of mine the
third friend and I repeated the same
sentence I said I don’t like you she
looked at me and she said that’s your
problem I like you
that’s what authentic people do openly
confidently comfortably and sensitively
what you are seeing there is a doughnut
it’s only a symbolic representation of
self-regulation please do not try and
eat one bite at a time for six days my
lot allows donuts and that’s why she has
put in this slide here so don’t try this
there was a math teacher and he went to
his class to teach arithmetic and he
showed a pen to his students and asked
them there are five sheep in this pen
if one sheep comes out how many will
remain all the class answered correctly
there was only one child who wrote none
of the sheep will remain the teacher got
angry and told the child you do not know
eres Matic the child smiled and told the
teacher so you do not know sheep
authenticity is all about not behaving
like sheep whenever someone tells you to
do something because everyone else is
doing it please pause and ponder
whenever someone tells you that you do
it because everyone else is doing it
here and there
learn to say no to negativity as well as
learn to say no to any kind of peer
pressure
my daughter has never been able to get
anything by saying that everyone else
has it she got a phone also when she was
in 11th grade only because unfortunately
I believe in authenticity too much
whenever I go and talk about
authenticity anywhere there’s a question
which is asked often how do you stay
motivated to stay authentic all the time
and I always say that in order to stay
authentic our self-awareness propels us
to stay authentic all the time whenever
we dive deep into inside of us we get
the pearl of positivity and the pearl of
purpose that helps us to stay motivated
the bigger the purpose you have in life
the more motivated you feel if you wish
to score well and if you wish to get
admission in a good college you will be
working towards studying hard and also
writing your applications well but if
your purpose is to know more if your
purpose is to help more to serve more to
learn more to experience more to
experiment more you will be motivated to
do more if you want that there should be
a fire in your belly
it will intrinsically motivate you and
at the same time if you start thinking
about some fuel to be added by extrinsic
motivators it will keep you motivated
for a longer time if you want to become
a space scientist or a space explorer
what you need to do is in order to keep
you intrinsically motivated you could
read about rocket science you could find
out about space explorations but life
stories of people like Richard Branson
or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk would act as
external motivators for all of you what
you need to do is to balance out your
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation if
you want to glow forever dive deep
inside discover yourself love yourself
and don’t forget to laugh at yourself
if you want to glow forever
self-regulate your behavior especially
when you want to say no if you want to
grow forever find out your purpose
beyond yourself success is getting what
you want and happiness is wanting what
you get I failed in my 10th grade
examination I failed to convince my
parents when I wanted to marry I failed
to scale up my first venture but in
between these failures
I discovered my authentic and happy self
anyone can keep going thank you
you
you
I’m to share with you the story of a
teenager a young girl who stayed with
her parents in a small Indian town
she had just appeared for her 10th grade
exams the first board exam of her life
she was a fairly good student who topped
her class till the 9th grade and so she
expected to get a good result but to her
surprise and shock what she found out
was that she failed her 10th board exam
you could well imagine how she must have
felt it’s like you’re the smartest
player on your school ticket team you
get to play for the state team and you
get out on the first ball see it fail in
a subject called Hindi a national
language and what Sheikh scored was a ap
100 you could well imagine how she must
have felt you go out to play you get out
on the first ball and that two in the
front of your home crowd
not only this what happened was she
became a but of all family grapevine and
all school jokes it was brutal
it was devastating for a 15 year old her
parents are sternly if she had actually
messed up her paper with all her
confidence she said no when they were
sure that the girl had not done anything
wrong they took her to the board
headquarters at New Delhi when they
reached there they found out long
serpentine queues outside the board
headquarters there were a lot of
students who faced the same faith when
they tried speaking to them they met a
boy who had scored a zero on his math
paper when he expected a full hundred
they met another girl who expected more
than 90% in the chemistry paper but what
she had scored was a meager 47 but then
it’s a board exam and the mark sheet is
the universal truth the only allowed
measure to all of them was to apply for
evaluation that is what all of them did
and came back to a long wait as expected
the revaluation result then come in time
and the teenager had to go for the
supplementary exam guess what at the
supplementary exam center she was the
only candidate who had gotten a
supplementary in Hindi the invigilator
looked at her critically she felt really
humiliated you could imagine how she
must have felt it’s like you go out in
the cricket arena and you are about to
catch a ball and suddenly there’s
another fielder who comes rams into you
and you miss out on the catch for no
fault of yours anyways the supplementary
result came out and she scored a 75 in
the supplementary exam and as a result
what happened was that she cleared her
tenth board exam but with the
supplementary marksheet
attached to her original mark sheet the
story isn’t over yet after four and a
half grueling months she received an
envelope from the Board of Secondary
Education and the envelope contained a
marriage certificate with a new mark
sheet the marriage certificate declared
that she was among the point zero zero
one percent of the meritorious students
in the whole country that year and the
new mark sheet stated that her original
marks were 91 100 when she saw that mark
sheet she was reminded of all that
happened to her in the last four and a
half months she had changed a school she
had lost some friends she had lost some
confidence and some weight – but what
she had gained was a big lesson to face
the failure without fail the story isn’t
over yet either
do you remember the boy who it’s called
a zero on his math paper and he was
completely grief-stricken when the girl
met him on the board headquarters when
she went there she was curious to find
out if the boy also brought his results
changed or something would happen for
him so she tried to get in touch with
the boy and she found out that the
result had changed but the boy was not
there to receive the news he took his
life and gave in to the external
pressures he didn’t believe in himself
but believed in those who didn’t believe
in him
I know this story very well because I’ve
lived this story I am
teenager whose perspective about life
and about herself changed when she was a
fifteen-year-old
I didn’t know the word authenticity then
but I have lived in the spirit of this
world since then this whole incident got
me in touch with myself I learned about
myself more than what I would have
otherwise known when I got a 18100 there
were a lot of people who wanted me to
feel sad and guilty when I obtained a
9100 the same group of people wanted me
to feel super excited but when I thought
about it when I dived deep into myself I
realized that I neither felt guilty nor
I felt super excited and that held me to
know and discover myself better when I
tried to find out I realized that I
loved new experiences I loved myself for
loving journeys more than destination
and most importantly I found out that I
can laugh at myself whenever people
started talking about this failure of
mine I would start talking about it
first and started to laugh about it and
as I laughed when I spoke about my
failure
it made me comfortable with the concept
of failure and that made me confident
whenever I think about that boy I always
feel that I would have never done what
he did had he faced it with a little
confidence and a little humor he would
be giving a TED talk somewhere today if
you want to grow in life discover
yourself love yourself for who you are
and try to learn to laugh at yourself
because self-awareness makes you your
own friend philosopher and guide when I
discovered and befriended self-awareness
I realized that I loved being an
entrepreneur I’m a startup enthusiast
and I’m a serial entrepreneur I consider
my marriage to be my first startup
because at an age of 20 I
decided to marry someone whom everyone
opposed and after 21 years today the
venture is successful and is fairly
evaluated – apart from my two other
business ventures that I’m running
successfully at the moment another
learning that I had from this experience
of my 10th grade was in human behavior
during those four and a half months lot
of my family and friends intentionally
or unintentionally said things to me
which hurt me which humiliated me I
wanted to give it back to them I wanted
to fight it back but I controlled my
urge of anger spitting I controlled my
impulse to mirror their own behavior I
learned to self-regulate authenticity is
not about saying out loud whatever your
head says or whatever your heart feels
authenticity is about being open being
comfortable with criticism and being
sensitive to others during my MBA days
one of our professors gave us a small
experiment to do all the students were
given different sentences and they were
told to try and speak those sentences to
different people and report record their
responses the sentence given to me was I
don’t like you I was expected to go and
try this sentence on different people so
I went to one of my friends and told her
I don’t like you immediately came the
response even I don’t like you fine
I went to my another friend and said the
same thing to her listen I don’t like
you
and she got concerned she said why what
happened did I do something wrong did I
hurt you
I didn’t know how to respond to that so
I said I genuinely do not know so she
said find out and let me know okay I
went to this amazing friend of mine the
third friend and I repeated the same
sentence I said I don’t like you she
looked at me and she said that’s your
problem I like you
that’s what authentic people do openly
confidently comfortably and sensitively
what you are seeing there is a doughnut
it’s only a symbolic representation of
self-regulation please do not try and
eat one bite at a time for six days my
lot allows donuts and that’s why she has
put in this slide here so don’t try this
there was a math teacher and he went to
his class to teach arithmetic and he
showed a pen to his students and asked
them there are five sheep in this pen
if one sheep comes out how many will
remain all the class answered correctly
there was only one child who wrote none
of the sheep will remain the teacher got
angry and told the child you do not know
eres Matic the child smiled and told the
teacher so you do not know sheep
authenticity is all about not behaving
like sheep whenever someone tells you to
do something because everyone else is
doing it please pause and ponder
whenever someone tells you that you do
it because everyone else is doing it
here and there
learn to say no to negativity as well as
learn to say no to any kind of peer
pressure
my daughter has never been able to get
anything by saying that everyone else
has it she got a phone also when she was
in 11th grade only because unfortunately
I believe in authenticity too much
whenever I go and talk about
authenticity anywhere there’s a question
which is asked often how do you stay
motivated to stay authentic all the time
and I always say that in order to stay
authentic our self-awareness propels us
to stay authentic all the time whenever
we dive deep into inside of us we get
the pearl of positivity and the pearl of
purpose that helps us to stay motivated
the bigger the purpose you have in life
the more motivated you feel if you wish
to score well and if you wish to get
admission in a good college you will be
working towards studying hard and also
writing your applications well but if
your purpose is to know more if your
purpose is to help more to serve more to
learn more to experience more to
experiment more you will be motivated to
do more if you want that there should be
a fire in your belly
it will intrinsically motivate you and
at the same time if you start thinking
about some fuel to be added by extrinsic
motivators it will keep you motivated
for a longer time if you want to become
a space scientist or a space explorer
what you need to do is in order to keep
you intrinsically motivated you could
read about rocket science you could find
out about space explorations but life
stories of people like Richard Branson
or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk would act as
external motivators for all of you what
you need to do is to balance out your
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation if
you want to glow forever dive deep
inside discover yourself love yourself
and don’t forget to laugh at yourself
if you want to glow forever
self-regulate your behavior especially
when you want to say no if you want to
grow forever find out your purpose
beyond yourself success is getting what
you want and happiness is wanting what
you get I failed in my 10th grade
examination I failed to convince my
parents when I wanted to marry I failed
to scale up my first venture but in
between these failures
I discovered my authentic and happy self
anyone can keep going thank you
you
you
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