Winning Isn't Everything: The Mindset That Changes Everything | Nishant Sapra | TEDxSSCBS

[00:00:12]Okay, uh very quick question. How many of you know how to drive?

[00:00:15]Uh hands.

[00:00:18]Quite a lot of you.

[00:00:20]Okay. And how many of you know, uh remember the day you were learning to drive and you were with maybe your father besides you and you press the wrong pedal. You press accelerator instead of brake or you press the brake when you wanted to just stop.

[00:00:36]And for some of you probably who were learning with the elder brother besides you, uh you will remember it more clearly. But uh if you were like me who learned with elder sister, uh let's say it gets pretty intense there.

[00:00:50]But uh taking it forward, what if it was not on a training ground that you press the wrong pedal, but it was on a highway?

[00:01:00]Uh you just want to accelerate, but you just press the sudden brake.

[00:01:04]So, let's say it gets pretty deadly there.

[00:01:07]One step more. What if you do that in your life? What happens when you want to be moving, but you just stop or when you should be stopping and taking a detour or just looking the other way, you just keep moving. What happens?

[00:01:25]More than what happens, let's first explore why does that happen.

[00:01:30]Okay.

[00:01:31]So, this happens because we are in a constant battle within us because of the two voices, two advices that we have been given along the way.

[00:01:40]The first one says, "Never give up."

[00:01:43]And the other one says, "Never settle."

[00:01:47]Never give up. We all have you know, moved up listening to an advice. We "Bade chalo, dhir tum bade chalo. Samne pahad ho, sher ki dahad ho. Ruko na tum at all."

[00:01:59]What does it tell us? It tells us to be resilient, to keep moving forward, to not stop, and you know, to hold the fort.

[00:02:08]That's what it is being advised.

[00:02:11]But somewhere along the way, there comes another voice that says What does it tell? This tells us that if there is too much of toxicity, then leave. Then take a detour. Don't let it consume you. Right? So, just abandon the fort when it is needed.

[00:02:35]So, one side we have abandon the fort and on the other side, it says hold the fort.

[00:02:41]Now, these are very simple instructions. One says you to hold, the other says you to just move on.

[00:02:50]Like when you drive a car, you can't drive a car with just one pedal. You can't have a car with just an accelerator or with just a brake pedal to it. You need both. Likewise, in life, you need both these things equally well.

[00:03:03]Now, what matters is that at what point of time you press which pedal. That's what defines and makes all the difference.

[00:03:14]Hi, I'm Nishant Sapra and I run a digital design, development, and automation studio by the name The Dreamer Designs. And I'll take you through my journey and what makes me qualified for speaking on this battle that we all go through consciously or unconsciously is because I've been on these two extremes of never giving up and never settling way too many times now. So, I'll take you through my life journey.

[00:03:42]Okay.

[00:03:43]So, this is kind of my life on a graph.

[00:03:46]You'll see it's ups and downs, but mainly moving forward thanks to God.

[00:03:52]I hope it was more like a pitch deck, you know, straight line up to the top, but that's not how the life is.

[00:03:58]So, I started as an animator, and I was doing pretty well there. I was working in a software called Flash back then it used to be, and well, I was being featured in news for the games I created and animations that I'd done. I was quite on top, but then one fine day Adobe said that Flash is no longer going to be existing. It's the software that we are pulling the plug from.

[00:04:22]So, I saw an downside.

[00:04:26]I was That was the only skill that I had, and that was my only plan that I had, and that was gone. Then, I moved towards learning more towards, you know, designing, graphic, UI, UX, worked in it, worked hard in it, and it was going very well again. It started going quite good. I started freelancing, and in within freelancing it was again going excellent. I got clients like Nokia, Yahoo, Castrol, top of my time at that time. I left the job because this freelancing thing was going very good, and the day I left the job, the freelancing client that I had, they backfired. So, again, I had no job, no freelancing, and just the skill, and it all went down.

[00:05:17]Took another direction, uh moved towards international clients in Indian market.

[00:05:26]And there some good things happened. We started working with clients like Microsoft, Yahoo, Dell. Again, wow, this is going so good.

[00:05:39]But then they said no designing only would not make a cut. You need to learn development or have development facility in house.

[00:05:46]Development never never got into that direction, but then had to take it. So, we started hiring developers, started learning develop development and all.

[00:05:56]Got good with it, and last year we were the design partners for Indian Paralympic team, and also currently we are working with a subsidiary of Coal India. So, you know, good things started happening again. And then AI came in. Now, when AI came in, whole design industry went down. So, again we saw a dip. But now we are in the process of creating our AI and automation process. So, I know that this time my graph is going to be much higher up than there.

[00:06:28]But this could have been different.

[00:06:33]What if when I was an animator, I held the fort for way too long? What if I did not have evolved? So, I would have gone up, see the peak of my career, but then after that, probably the graph would have been something like this that you see here.

[00:06:53]Or let's say let's explore another direction. What if it would have happened that when I was doing animation, then after animation, say animation drop, I started something else like a jewelry design. And then from there something else, maybe freelancing, maybe some other skill. So, if I was leaving my fort way too many times, then my graph would have looked something like this, never going up because every time I'm starting afresh.

[00:07:23]So, I'll tell you what I learned out of it, that it's not about talent. I would have been working much much harder in either of these two cases. The talent remains the same, the person remains the same.

[00:07:36]So, what changes? What changes is the frameworks that we have and the choices that we make along this way. Which pedal to press at what time is what matters the most. Do you hold the fort or do you abandon it?

[00:07:54]This dwand and nir dwand will always be there.

[00:07:59]You This is always going to be in every situation that you come, you need to decide if you really want to be moving forward or pause and take a you know, wisdom choice of not moving forward and taking another course.

[00:08:13]I'll give you five frameworks. If you go through those, probably your graph would be much better than what I had or you know, you you will be able to see the difference there.

[00:08:26]The first one is find your forte or find your foot.

[00:08:32]It's important. So, right now most of you are students.

[00:08:37]It's okay to be pausing and reflecting upon your choices, making mistakes. What matters is that you fail faster and rise even faster than that. So, do make choices of changing the careers, changing your course of action, finding your foot. That is very important. So, once you have found your foot, then stick to it and expand it.

[00:09:05]Before that, you are allowed to make changes, but once you have found it, stick to it. That's very important.

[00:09:12]Then, never quit without a bridge. So, if you are into a job and you want to say go to other one, find the next one first. If you are into a profession, you want to make switch, learn about that profession, the next one that is coming up beforehand and then make a switch. It doesn't apply to your, you know, personal relationships. Don't find another girlfriend before you have, you know, left over the one it's only career choices. So, these advices are to be taken only for your career thing.

[00:09:43]Next is have a plan B, C, D, E, as many as you can.

[00:09:52]So, first thing that I told was to hold to find your foot, but do not just stick to that. Have other sub forts as well where you can go in case of emergency.

[00:10:06]So, kings used to do it. They used to have one, you know, king fort somewhere and then some sub forts wherever they would go. So, do that thing. I'll tell you how that worked for me. So, during COVID times uh there was a lot of turbulence in international market, Indian market, in the design industry.

[00:10:23]So, we were at times performing from our offices and then the next day we know that all the designers will have to work from their home. The setups were not ready. So, we saw some kind of a downside there. But, during that while I had an e-commerce store running in the backside, you know, somewhere uh which was completely different market that was selling religious goods to Indian audience. So, that particular project did give a lot of uh say, you know, money at that time to help us stay strong. So, have plan B, C, D, a side hustle, something that you can count on, something that you enjoy.

[00:11:00]That's very important to have in your life.

[00:11:07]Then comes the Shah Khan formula. So, in one of the TED Talks like this or in an interview maybe, Shah Rukh said that when I come to work, I come as if I know nothing and I'm here to learn. And this he said not when he was starting his career, but when he was already a superstar. So, it is very important especially in this, you know, AI thing uh that's happening.

[00:11:30]Maybe the career that you're planning to get into, maybe it will change very differently. So, learning is essential, no matter what stage you are in. Maybe you are 40 years, 50 years, just starting up, 24 years, learning you cannot escape that. So, make sure you keep learning. Habit of learning should always be there. When Shah Rukh Khan can do it, probably like we all like to imitate what Shah Rukh Khan does. So, yeah, we can do it.

[00:11:58]Then, plan carefully. So, if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. We've heard this a lot of times, but why does it matter? So, example, suppose you had a bad day, a very bad day, a very emotional day, you just cried off from somewhere, and you are now sitting in your car.

[00:12:19]The chances of you pressing the wrong pedal are much more than as compared to when you are very calm, very stable, and you are just heading out to drive your car, right? So, what has happened here? Here, one thing has happened that your emotional imbalance is there. Why? Because you have to take decisions when your brain is already occupied.

[00:12:39]Now, what planning does is that it gives you that comfort that no matter what is happening, I'm planned for it, and that emotional response is much more stable. So, planning is very essential. And now, one last piece of advice, dream big.

[00:12:59]Uh, we Chetraj also quoted Dr. A.P.J.

[00:13:02]Abdul Kalam that, you should be dreaming big.

[00:13:10]And we have heard it all a lot of times that, you know, we should be dreaming big. You aim for the moon, and you get to the stars. I'm not getting there. I am asking you one different question.

[00:13:21]What if you have aimed for the moon, and you reach there too soon?

[00:13:27]What happens? Do you know?

[00:13:28]When you are at the moon that you have always imagined, there is a void. There is blank, the dark sky.

[00:13:37]And it's not where you want to be.

[00:13:43]I know it sounds contradictory. Okay, something really good. Okay, actually but I got a sub notch. Okay, if you have a dream that's too little or too small, then for example, let's say some of you might have a dream that I'll get into a college like this, prestigious college like this, and then from there I'll join a big consultancy or big four. I will make my job there.

[00:14:07]What will happen when that comes true?

[00:14:10]About once you get over that, so you have over So, one page out here for the latest here for the year. Okay, you can fuel the the fuel that dream is now fulfilled.

[00:14:24]So, what's next? So, what to do? How to engage this?

[00:14:29]Have the big have the dream so big that you may never achieve it.

[00:14:35]That should be when you are telling someone that you know, I have a dream and you take talking about that dream.

[00:14:42]It should be a little embarrassing to be honest that yeah, you get to search right number. So, the journey to the dream should be very exciting, would be very exciting if you have dream that big. So, make dream as big as possible because if you reach there too soon, then you will need another one.

[00:15:02]So, take life as a long highway where you need at times to accelerate, at times you need to just pause. So, you need to have wisdom when to pause and you need to have courage to accelerate.

[00:15:16]The real skill is not to choose one pedal over the other, but to know which one to choose at what point of time.

[00:15:24]So, in the end, I'll just say that I hope that your journey is smooth and you make the right choices at the right time.

[00:15:35]And you know, because the one decision at the wrong time may change it for good. So, hold your fort or abandon it, but may your fort be growing, may you be growing and reach spaces. Thank you. That's Nishant Sapra.