Creative on Purpose Live - Saurabh Mithal

Flipping across the ether at the speed of bytes. And bingo, we're live. Welcome to Creative on Purpose Live, insightful conversations with inspiring difference makers to inform your quest to live your legacy in endeavors that matter. I'm your host, Scott Perry, Chief Difference Maker at Creative on Purpose. If you are looking to fly higher in the difference only you can make, visit creativeonpurpose.com and sign up for the newsletter. Get insight and inspiration delivered to your inbox 3 times every week. And a free copy of Trust Yourself, a simple 3-step decision-making process to get unstuck and going. Let's meet today's guest. So, Rabindra Tal, welcome to the broadcast. Please tell our viewers who you are, what you're up to these days, and where can they go to learn more about you and the difference you're making.

Hello, Scott Perry. It's just such a pleasure to be here, to be talking to you. And I am a writer, I am a career coach, and I, I think I'm I would be a lifelong learner. So I just adore learning. I have started an organization called Passionately Curious where I help individuals find and do the work that matters to them. So we have programs called career design. We help people on sustenance through the work that matters so that they can keep doing the work again and again. So yeah. That would be about me.

I would love to just start with— I'd love— you and I have known each other a little bit through the Akimbo workshops over the past several years, and I'm familiar with the work that you're doing now. I would love to learn a little bit about the backstory. What brought you to the work that you're doing right now? What's the journey been?

So I did everything that the world asks you to do. In India, engineering is a thing that every Indian does. So I did the engineering, I did my MBA. I went into investment bank. I was working with them. But it wasn't fulfilling me, and I didn't see myself thriving there. I decided to take the leap. I started teaching. I experimented a lot over the last 10 years. Last couple of years have been really transformative for me, as I got to know about Steven Pressfield. I got to know about Seth Godin. I got to know about Tim Ferriss and just understanding the core learnings from them of professionalism, of generosity, of empathy, applying them to my work, of becoming reliable and effective. And by doing that, now my work is predominantly in helping my students and my colleagues become more reliable and effective. To themselves and to the world so that they can be more generous.

Well, one of the things that I'm hearing in that response is you did something fairly early on that I think a lot of us don't really recognize until much later on, and that the thing that you had invested in doing, which I'm guessing involved some serious financial investment, not to mention time and sweat equity. Was you experienced the sense of not thriving and you allowed yourself to ignore the sunk costs that were already invested and to move into something else. And so because you did it so early on, I'm fascinated by that. And for our viewers, just curious, you know, what was that process like? How did you come to feel that way, that you weren't thriving in what you were doing? And how did you get the courage to step into becoming something else?

So like Steve Jobs mentions in his commencement speech that the dots only connect when you look back at them. In Tesfield's book, he talks about stupidity to be on your side and rationality to be against your creativity. And I think I have been a lot stupid. So I really am proud of that. The thing that happened, Scott, is I kept hearing all through my life that if you make this mistake, you're ruined. If you make that mistake, you're ruined. Like, if you don't do an MBA, your career is ruined. If you leave your job, your career is ruined. And somehow I kept making these mistakes and I kept not dying. Like, I was supposed to die. Like, It was said that if I left the bank, then I will die or my career will be ruined. But I didn't die and I survived. And that made me curious. And that took that fear away of, if I did not do this, then what will happen? And if I did not do— so I started poking at things. I started becoming more and more curious about— so up till 2017, like 5 years ago roughly, I only had two models of career that were presented in front of me. One was get a corporate job and succeed in that. The other model was get a million-dollar or $100 million or, I don't know, $1 billion funding and become this big tycoon. And I just didn't fit in any of them. And I was like, okay, how do I get to know myself? Then I got to know about Tim Ferriss. I read 4-Hour Workweek. I got a model of having a happy career, but still I didn't have the self-discipline and self-awareness of getting it into action. When I read Pressfield, I understood the challenge of working alone, and not only the challenge, the pleasure of working alone. So When he mentioned that, you know what, it's difficult. I was like, okay, I just thought that I was bad. And it was supposed to be really easy. And it was something wrong with me. So that has really been one of the learnings for me.

Well, I love that you said that you didn't have the self-awareness, but you certainly had enough self-awareness to realize you were in a wrong place. I just, I think that's really worth applauding and highlighting. And the other thing is, I love that your brand, Passionately Curious, has two of our core values here at Creative Our Purpose in it. I would love to just hear your— one of the things that I love to do is just make sure we're clear on the definition of terms. So When you say curious, what does that mean to you and the brand Passionately Curious? And when you say passionate, what does that mean to you and the brand Passionately Curious?

That is such a good and interesting question, and it opens up so much. So one thing I have realized is— so first, I will start from there. So first is curiosity about yourself. Who are you? And to understand, we are not an objective being, we are a subjective being. And a subjective being keeps exploring, keeps expanding, keeps changing. So this question, who are you, is a dynamic question. And the Sourabh that was yesterday is not the Sourabh that is today, and it will not be the Sourabh that will be tomorrow. So the question again comes, who are you? So first is a passionate curiosity about yourself. And very— and we go into a very high spiritual, uh, uh, area when we think about this. But what I mean is, oh, I work better when I am making notes rather than using slides. Oh, slides don't work with me. Ah. I like it better when I'm talking with a group of people rather than one individual, or vice versa. Like, very slight nuances that we start noticing about ourselves. And then as our awareness grows, a lot of uniqueness starts evolving. So my— especially my work is around helping people understand these nuances about themselves, understand their individuality,. And then how can they do the work in that direction? Because, uh, I have been teaching all my life, uh, Scott Perry, all my life. Like, my younger brother never studied from me, and I always wanted to teach him, and I like said, study. And then anybody who wanted, who just agreed to study with me, I was like, I'll teach you, don't worry, because I had this vacuum. And I have been teaching since, I don't know, 10th year, when I was 10 years old or 11 years old, I have been teaching. So for me, the hours I have spent in teaching have reached such a point that that is a skill that I have mastered. Now the unique part is that each of us have something in which we have put in the hours already, have something in which we just do it whenever we get time, whenever we get there is certain niche, certain nuances about each person. So I'm very curious about each individual I meet. And I, uh, that is a curiosity I want to develop in them about themselves, about each other, and about having that wow factor that I really didn't— like, there's a student who have been mentoring actively for the last 18 months, and suddenly I was having a discussion with her and she mentioned, 'You know what, I like horse riding.' I'm like, 'Where was this? Why don't I know that?' And then, like, it just changed the entire paradigm for me, for her. So yeah, the curiosity about— and about ourselves, these finer nuances. And then being curious about possibility. Not like— not stay in the finite mindset about career, about love, about life, about anything in life and about just exploring the possibilities, just taking action and seeing, oh, I didn't know I could do that. Oh, that worked. Oh, I'm surprised. I thought it wouldn't work. So becoming— I think curiosity is a skill. As Seth says, it's not a talent. It's a skill that we can develop by being curious every day. So yeah, I hope I answered your question.

No, I love what you were saying because You know, for us at Creative on Purpose, curiosity is the antidote to one of the biggest problems in the world today, which is overconfidence and certainty about things that there's absolutely nothing to be certain or confident about. And what you were saying is, you know, above the Oracle of Delphi, it reads, know thyself. And this idea that you were expressing of curiosity about oneself and then curiosity about others and about your situation, your circumstances. And that idea of curiosity from the inside out really resonates with me, and I really appreciate that. And then on the passion piece, I'm always curious to hear people, people's take on where does— where do we find passion? Because we talk about that a lot, especially here in the United States. Find your passion, make your passion your job, you know, find your purpose, make your purpose your job. But when you talk to most people, they can't identify what their passion or purpose is. So I'm just curious about what, what's your take on where passion resides and how people can cultivate it or find it?

Finding our passion, again, I will go back to the thing that I said, we are subjective human beings, we are not objective. And the question, find your passion, kind of transforms into, okay, what is my label? Am I a dancer? Can you put me in a dancer box? Am I a videographer? Am I an investment banker? What is it? Like, just put me in this, I don't know, grid and just solve me and tell me, yeah, your passion is this, do this, and now you don't have to work a day in your life. And so it's a very It's a very shallow way of approaching yourself. I think it's a way of disrespecting yourself by saying, I need an answer to myself. So I think Seth has created this very good example, and you have created this very good example of how life evolves. I was talking to Michael Feely a couple of weeks back, And he, he worked really hard on becoming an actor and a singer on New York Broadway. And then he's like, yeah, good, I have done that. How can I move to the next thing I'm doing? And now he's a life coach and a wonderful real estate agent, and he's happy. And he's not thinking, oh, my answer was singer, how am I not a singer now? Like, so I think That is one thing that I would say is where are you— where do you want to go next? That is the question I would ask. I would say forget your passion. Where do you want to go next? What is next for you? What is scary for you? What are you feeling like running away from? Because whatever is next for us, we just feel this tremendous force that takes us away from it. Like, do anything in this world but not do this. But what is it? What is it. And it requires— actually, uh, if having said all that, it requires a safe space. It requires you to have a safe space, you to have a coach, you to have a, uh, a platform where— have a community where you can express, you know what, when I was a kid, I liked that. Can I pick up the pencil again and start sketching again? And sometimes people need a yes from someone. They just need that permission. Sometimes, I understand, yes, don't ask for permission, but sometimes they need because they have become so used to asking for permission that they need that permission. And then if they have the safe space and the safe community, I have seen my students do magic over the last 1, 2 years. I just, when I go online onto their discussion board, onto their Basecamp projects, I am like, Oh my God, like, I am just, uh, blown off the top of my mind. And these are students who said they had nothing. And they— like, one of my students asked me for a permission like this, like, can I write a short story tomorrow? And I'm like, yeah, you can. And now we are all fans of her story. She has written more than 120 stories over the last year. And every day we are desperately waiting for her to write a story. And so I think these 3 components that I have identified in my coaching, uh, journey is you need a coach, because without a coach you won't— you need a coach who will prod you in the right direction. Like, whenever you are going off track, like, you said you wanted to go there, why are you going there, by the way? So you need someone who can do that for you. You need a community, fellow travelers. They might have their own destination, but you know, need to have— ah, I'm not on this train alone. Yeah, there are others here. It's very lonely being the only person in the train, like, just right. So you need a community. And third is you need to take action. If you don't take action, if you don't write your poem, if you are not— uh, if you don't write a poem today, then it's very difficult to call yourself a poet. If you don't write your story today, it's very difficult to call yourself a writer. If I don't take a class today, it's very difficult for me to call myself a coach, a teacher. So when these three come into being— you have a safe space with fellow travelers, you have a coach who is looking over you, and you have this habit of action, daily shipping— then Gradually, over a period of weeks and months, you will start becoming curious about yourself. You will start becoming curious. And someday you will raise your hand, you know what, can I write a short story? And that is what we are waiting for, for you to raise your hand and start moving ahead.

Love it. One of the interesting things to me about the purpose and passion discussion here in the United States is we build institutions educational and occupational that suck our natural desire to find passion and purpose out of us. And then they shame us and blame us when we can't find it. And I love what about what you're saying is, um, that you can— and this is something that, that I definitely believe— is, is that purpose and passion become naturally occurring resources, renewable resources when you apply yourself to the work right in front of you with passion and purpose, when you have that daily habit of doing your work, when you have that daily habit of shipping. And so it becomes something that is refined and defined over time, and it becomes this renewable resource that you can just keep growing. You can share that, the abundance with other people. And what's so interesting about the way we think about it most of the time is like there's this thing inside you called passion and purpose. Find it and then use it until it's used up and then go back and do what we told you to do. And so it's a really interesting dynamic. I love the way that you framed all of that. And I also, what I was hearing in what you were saying, and another big core belief here at Creative on Purpose is this idea of doing the work daily. Routines and relationships, having people, fellow travelers, a community of doing your work in community, having a coach, a guide, a mentor, and then that, that daily effort. Before I ask you to answer that question, we have— Saurabh, you have brought your posse with you today, so I just wanted to give a quick shout out. We got Kushi. If I'm pronouncing these names wrong, just tell me. Who is saying hello to you and to I?

Uh, Shawn.

Shawn, I love that name. That's a beautiful name. And there's again getting lots of love from Kushi. More from Shawn. Anamaya.

Anaya. Ananya. Thank you.

This is wonderful. Look at, look at this. You win. You win the Posse Prize, Rob. You have brought it. I appreciate that very much. So yeah, so I'm curious, you know, you've talked about the practice, you've talked about the importance of coaching and community and action. What are the routines and relationships that you practice yourself, or you cultivate yourself, and that you teach your students to help them build that support and encouragement ratchet that will help them continue to show up daily to do the work.

Yeah, that, that is very important. So I think it started with two, the two inspirations for me. One was Pressfield mentioning his daily routine of sitting on his desk at 10:30 AM every day following the same routine. And at around 3:00, 3:30, he wraps it up and doesn't worry about what he got done today. But he's like, I sat down, I did my work, and that's a good day's work. And same, I think Seth mentions about this in a Creative Morning thing when he talks about Isaac Asimov sitting in the morning, 6:37, and writing till noon, and then then only handling the world. So, what we have tried to do is we have— one thing that I realized in retrospect, I did not realize it going forward, was the power of community. And it's only the last couple of years that that thing has started really coming out because of Akimbo, because of you also, and then with my students. So what we are trying to do is, although creativity is at many times a solo venture, we try to create a community where we are coming together and sitting and doing our work. So one thing we do is we have our office hours from 11 AM to 3 PM where everyone will do their work, but they'll come at 10:30, they will announce in a meetup what their work is today, what they will get done, and what did they get done yesterday. And then for 4 hours we are on a Zoom meeting with our cameras on. Not only does that help in the work, like in getting our work done, that is one definite good part of it, it also helps us being less lonely. Like every morning when we see our fellow creators with their videos on, we just have this small 5-10 minute conversation.. But there's a very strong sense of connection and belonging when we do that. So that is there. We have workshops 3 days a week where we keep working, keep leveling up, keep trying to understand the challenges that we have and how can we level up from there. And we have the weekly mastermind. And so these are the different rituals that we have created. Some students now, they put in their to-do list that I need to comment on other people's dailies, and that's a task for them. And they feel so good when they are pushing others forward. So that kind of— the best thing I think is when 20-year-olds talk to me about, I'm doing this, is this generous or is this selfish? Like, was I empathetic enough here? And These are people who were so afraid a year back, and now they are showing up. One of my students is doing a stand-up show, stand-up comedy show, uh, this Sunday. So, and taking up these challenges is not easy. Like, I just adore her courage. Uh, we just had a discussion. I said, would you like to do that? And she's like, yeah. And that kind of like really makes it a lot of Yeah.

Oh, I love that. It sounds like there's a lot of synchronicity between the community that you've built and the group that we have at Creative On Purpose. And it's— I love that your template, and again, the 3 things that you mentioned are coaching, community, and action. And that is, if you have those 3 things, then you have everything you need to catalyze your forward progress in whatever your endeavor is. Even if your endeavor is to figure out what your endeavor is. And so I love, I love all that. One of the things that I'd like to just wrap it up with before we get to the final question is, you know, coaching right now is something that is ubiquitous. You can't swing a stick in LinkedIn without hitting a couple dozen of them. And You know, there's, there's, there's just a, there's a lot of it out there. Um, if I'm, if I'm honest, I see a lot of it that doesn't appear to be being done very well. And so how do you, how do you now, how do you, how would you encourage people to navigate any tension or resistance they're feeling? I think there's a lot of people that do understand that they need help, they need guidance, they need someone to, um, you know, ask them the beautiful questions, the challenging questions that will help them get out of their own way and get going in the difference only they can make. Um, but it's really hard to find someone that can really assist you in the way that you can learn by doing, as opposed to being instructed or taught, which is a different thing, I think, than coaching. So how would you encourage people to go about finding themselves, um, a coach or whether it's a formal coach or an informal coach, someone that can serve that role in that 3 parts of coaching community in action?

That's an amazing question. And that's a really challenging endeavor. Even for me, it has been challenging how to find the right coach. And I think it is more— it is a very— like, it is very much analogous to dating. As you don't marry the first person you meet on a dating site, or you don't marry the first—

you don't?

Oh no. Yeah. So I think, uh, what a couple of things that I, I think, uh, would be a good parameter to judge whether you should go ahead with a coach. First is, does their journey resonate with your journey, or is where they are something that you aspire to be. Because without that, it kind of— they are just guessing. So if you can resonate— so for instance, if someone comes to me and they say, I am in a corporate job and I want to just get promotion after promotion in this corporate job and become big, I might not be the right coach for you because I left my corporate job one year into my corporate job. So, uh, if someone says, oh, I think I am creative but this world forces me not to be creative and I face a lot of challenge when I sit and write down, then I'm like, oh, I'm the right person for you because I face those challenges. I have gone through, uh, this entire journey. So whenever my students come to me with a challenge like, Sourabh, this is happening, I'm like, 'Yeah, I know this is happening. So now you do this.' It's because I've gone through each and every variation that they face. So I think that is one way. The other is if you can just go through their work. Like, I write a daily blog at saurabhmittal.com. And if you read that blog, if you read 10 entries, 12 entries, you will get to know whether 'You are in line with me,' or 'You are not in line with me.' And just investing that time before you get formal, or before you make an engagement with a coach— because again, leaving a coach is again like a breakup only. The coach is invested in you, you are invested in the coach. If they are not invested, then what was this relationship altogether about? So I don't think coaching can be a 2-month journey or 6-month journey or a 1-year journey. It kind of is a lifelong journey because your coach will evolve and you will evolve. And people who are coaching for money— I'm not talking about them— but people who are coaching for coaching, they want to see that growth in their, uh, the person they are coaching. They want to visualize it for 10 years, 20 years. Anyone who is into short-term coaching, I don't understand that. It's all about the long term, of giving the person the space to fall and then to let them try to get back on their own. If they are not able to, then lend them a hand so that now they can grab your hand and come back up. So there's a lot of cushion that is needed in coaching. And if anyone is looking at coaching as, oh, I'm earning $100,000 a year, I want $200,000 a year, let me hire a coach and then I'll get that. There must be coaches for that and there must be people who want that, but that would not be my cup of tea, so I might not be able to comment on that. So yeah. Yeah.

Well, the two themes that I just heard you share are trust and investment. And I think there's a ton of value in what you were saying about trusting your instincts. Do you resonate with the person that you're considering working with? And then the investment. And then, of course, are you willing to invest in your own progress, in your own success, in your own development? One of the One of the quotes that we talk, we throw around a lot at Creative on Purpose is the Goethe quote, "As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live." And so I love what you were saying about you have to be, in order to engage in a coach, a successful relationship with the coach, you have to trust yourself enough to lean into the edges of your understanding and ability and to invest in the journey, invest in yourself and the journey that that person's going to take you on. And I guess the only thing that I would kind of layer on top of that is don't seek some— don't seek a coach who will coach you out of agreement. You don't need someone to tell you how wonderful you are and that you're perfect just the way you are and just go, go, go, be you. You need someone that's going to coach you for insight, insight into the things that you can't now yet see and have, and they help you see in a way you can't unsee so that you will lean into that tension and lean through that attention and lean into the transformation and your own potential. So I love everything that you just shared, Saurabh. We're coming up to the end. Oh, sure.

Go ahead. Can I add? So I think coaching is, in the very true sense, a freelancing endeavor. It can't be a bootstrapped endeavor because it's something where you are investing as a coach in every student, in every person you are coaching. And Sometimes they might just need that you agree with them and they feel they don't find agreement anywhere outside and they just need someone to say, yeah, you make sense, you can do that. Sometimes you might need to be the bad guy and say, but why, but why, but why, 5 times, and then like, oh yeah, I don't know why. So I think it all comes down to becoming very— I think it's the most custom job in the world. Like, even clothes can be— rather, clothes can be ready-made, but coaching is, I think, very person-to-person, very individualistic, very freelance. Like, it has to be done one by one. So yeah, I just wanted to add that.

Totally agree. It's a— every client is a bespoke experience, for sure. Well, Saurabh, we're at the end of our time together, but I do have one last question that I always end with, and that is, You know, for the people that are watching, they, like you, want to either aspire or want to advance in the difference only they can make. And so what's one final encouragement that you would leave to the listeners to help them fly higher in the difference only they can make?

I think first thing I would say is there is no age for you to change or to accept yourself. Whether you are 11-year-old, 25-year-old, 60-year-old, 85-year-old, it doesn't matter. So first thing, like thinking it's too early or too late is just another way of that voice inside your head stopping you from doing what you want to do. Second thing is you don't need a certificate or a degree or a course or a curriculum or anything to get started. If you feel you want to be a musician, pick up the guitar, pick up the piano, start playing. If you want to be a writer, pick up the pen, get at the keyboard, start typing. Third thing, your family and friends are going to be the last people who will subscribe to your work, so don't try to show it to them and ask for validation. Build your own audience. Go to— if you are an avid book reader, go to bookstores, talk to people there. You'll find your first 10 fans in places you hang out at. And those 10 true fans will bring the 100, and those 100 will bring the 1,000. But if you expect your family and friends and your Instagram and LinkedIn audience to bring your 10 true fans, that might be very difficult. And then do whatever doesn't kill you. If it doesn't kill you, just do it. Take a workshop, start a podcast, write your blog, write your book, join Akimbo. And yeah, just one more thing, email. Just send that email. Don't reject yourself. Scott, I just sent that email, there was such a huge voice of resistance inside my head, and why are you sending Scott Perry this email that he should invite you as a guest? And just send that email. At best they will say no, and maybe they will say yes. So just do it. That would be Awesome.

Just do it. That sounds like a great tagline. Somebody ought to pick that up and do something with it. Well, thanks everyone for tuning in. Saurabh and I really appreciate you lending us your valuable time and attention. We hope that today's broadcast motivates you to step a little bit more boldly into the possibility only you can live and live your legacy. You can learn more about Saurabh and the difference that he's making over here at Passionately Curious. Www.creativeonpurpose.in. And of course, it's always great to see you at creativeonpurpose.com. Now, if you're listening to this as a podcast, please consider leaving a 5-star review. And now you can take this insight and inspiration from this conversation and fly a little bit higher in the difference only you can make. So, Rav Mital, thank you so much for being here with us and sharing your wisdom.

Thank you.