How Do You Inspire People

The idea is we're going to do a roundtable evaluation session, so please take a few notes if you'd like to give Haritosh some feedback. Obviously we want him to win, so please listen well. Before I introduce you, Haritosh, I'll just say Dexter, I did a bit of instruction about the grammarian. I introduced the word of the day very briefly. If you want to make any notes, please do. For the speech entitled TBA, let me welcome Haritosh Srivastav.

1995, on the rooftop of a small town in India, there were two siblings, brother and sister, on the rooftop. It was that time of the year when you have a little bit of Little bit of sun, little bit of cloud, they were having fun. And suddenly the elder brother says to the sister, do you see those white markings on the cloud, on the sky? These are the markings of the smoke that comes out of the aeroplane. And she says, how amazing would be to sit on those? And he says, you know what, I will be sitting on one of those one day. And they both laughed because that was not even possible. I'm talking about my own story back in 1995. And now when I talk about right now, I am here in the UK, almost 7-8 years out of the country. I've traveled more than 50,000-60,000 miles. I did calculate one day. And I've been able to work in different multinational companies, being able to work with people from different personalities. How did it all happen? This is what my story is all about. And if I have to talk about the things, I've put it into 3 parts. The first is about learning. Are you challenging yourself? Are you learning? You know, once upon a time, there was this experiment done where a kid got 3 plants, put it in 3 separate places, got it insulated, and did the same water, same sunlight, but there was one difference. In one plant, they were just going and saying, "You are useless, you are not gonna do anything in life, you are gonna be complete waste." In the second one, they didn't do anything. It was just getting the water, the sunlight, and all the fertilizers. And in the third one, they just went there and just praised, "You are gonna be amazing, you're gonna be so great, people are gonna love you." And what happens within 3 weeks? The first plant didn't grow at all. It was completely gone. The second plant was normal. It was how it was supposed to be, a normal plant. But the third plant actually went up 200%. Can you imagine? If just talking positive to a plant can make it grow 200%, what can it do to you? I remember, I think I was in class 6th, and I used to love playing gully cricket, you know, cricket that you play in the streets. And there was one of my distant relatives. We were doing that and it was my time to bat. I was so excited and just when I thought I'm gonna get the ball, the aunt came. He grabbed the hand of the cousin and he said, don't you dare talk to this guy. He's from a Hindi medium school. He's not gonna do anything in life. Stay away from him. That was like the first round. It was crucial. But then I remembered that I have to do something. Next time I went first time out of my city, I unfortunately got into living with somebody who was not at all interested in studies, and that impacted my own studies. I went from top 5% to bottom 5%. But somehow I managed to get into engineering college, and now I became conscious of my association. I wanted to be in the circle of people who are doing their best, who are going to the next level. Because as Jim Rohn says, you are the average of top 5 people you spend the most time with. And I became— even though I didn't know the concept, I became conscious of that. And that's how the trajectory went to the next level. The next concept I want to talk about is, are you pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. You know, I remember it was 2007. We had just joined our first corporate job, and there was supposed to be this group project. 3-4 people in a group, and they were supposed to be given to one department. They are supposed to go there, discuss, and then do a presentation. Wow! Now, I was assigned with another 2 guys who— and we were supposed to work with HR to come up with new policy recommendation. Who gives this task to freshers? But anyways, and these two guys never showed up. They never went to meet the HR, they never talked about the presentation, and on the day of the presentation, they were nowhere to be seen. Now I had a choice, and I knew I have done a terrible job. I had a choice, either I skip that and say, okay, I'm not prepared, I'm not gonna do that, or come up on the stage and do whatever I can do. I'm glad that on that day I choose the later one, because that I believe was the very first proper presentation that I gave. Not that I became the topper, I got the best marks, But when the remarks came out, there was a special mention that he had a choice to skip, but he still got over the stage and showed whatever he could. I want you to think about all such situations you have been through, and what are you going to do about it? I want you all to actually Close your eyes for a moment. Please close your eyes. I can see your eyes. Yeah. And think about a time when what you thought was a dream is now a reality. And once you have thought about that, think about what do you want to do that you think as a dream right now? Once you have found your answers, you can open your eyes with a smile. And this is my parting message: if you want to go to the next level, there are 3 formulas, 3 phrases you need to remember, and that is keep learning, keep growing, and most importantly Keep going out of your comfort zone. Thank you so much.